


The Phenomenal Pixie, #1

by TheLastGoodGoldfish



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hearst College, brief allusions to dark canonical events, spoilers for the whole show, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 10:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6563197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastGoodGoldfish/pseuds/TheLastGoodGoldfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veronica is a masked avenger who stalks the streets of Neptune. Logan is the intrepid reporter who's on the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Phenomenal Pixie, #1

Actually, he’s not even looking for her when he spots the girl in the library.

Okay, he’s “looking for her” in the sense that Logan is always, on some level, on the lookout for _her_. He’s looking for her in that he’s been seeking her out, actively or passively, for a year and a half, and that he’s always hyper conscious when he’s on campus, like she might be passing by him at any moment—waiting in line behind him at the coffee cart, mulling over Hearst lanyards in the bookstore, sitting behind him in lecture. For a while now, he’s had this feeling that if he saw her in person, somehow he would _know_.

But he’s not _really_ looking for her that afternoon. He’s in the library for totally unrelated reasons, using a table and the enforced quiet to work on a research paper. It’s around two-o’clock, and the librarians must be changing shifts, because the guy with the striped polo and the unibrow gives up his post behind the help desk to this blonde, who is really best described as Uni-Polo’s polar opposite.

She’s gorgeous, really, with champagne colored locks brushing around her elbows, secured away from her face by a thin white headband. She’s wearing this light blue floral print sundress and a short white cardigan, carrying a lacey cloth purse instead of a backpack. When she takes her seat at the desk, her posture is perfect. Even while she’s typing away on the computer beside her, her expression is utterly neutral; she doesn’t bite her lip in concentration, apparently lacks even a single nervous habit, and the only tell that Logan can glean from her is that she seems to have no tells at all.

It should also be noted that she is easily the most attractive staffer that Logan has come across in the dusty shelves of Hearst’s Main Stacks. Not that he has much by way of comparison: he has almost finished his second year at Hearst, and this is only maybe his third time in the campus library. The Stacks isn’t his go-to study spot, and most of his research needs are better met online or in the Conroy Journalism Archives across campus. But Logan is beginning to rethink his old study habits (or, as some might argue, lack thereof) in light of recent, Blond-Help-Desk-Attendant shaped developments.

 _It’s probably not her_ , he tells himself, so he’s braced for disappointment as he closes his laptop and stuffs it into his bag, never once taking his eyes off the girl situated behind the desk. She’s about the right height, the right build—no dark lipstick, but obviously that doesn’t mean... _Jesus, man, you sound like a serial killer._

Logan could probably locate any book he requires independently, or he could just do his research on the internet like a normal person, but neither of those options seems quite as appealing as approaching the girl at the desk with the truly inspired opening line:

“Thank God. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

The blonde looks up from the book on her lap— _Pride and Prejudice,_ upon investigation, like she’s trying to embody the Platonic ideal of cute undergrad help desk attendants—and takes Logan in with wide-(blue)-eyed innocence. “Me?” she breathes.

“Sure. You help people, right?” Logan smirks, picks up the little metal _Help_ sign, and dances it across the surface of the wooden desk between them. The blonde relaxes. Smiles. If it weren’t for the gold Zeta-Theta-Beta charm necklace, Logan would bet there’d be pearls around her neck.

“That’s what the sign says,” she replies, cheerful and friendly, but she doesn’t set aside her book, just folds her hands neatly atop it. “Are you lost amongst the mighty tomes of our hallowed halls? What can I help you find?”

He’s taken aback by the perkiness, by the sincere desire to be of help. Aren’t campus employees usually just exhausted work study kids? The voice is wrong, too, the inflection a touch too California Valley Girl. Higher, breathier, not sharp, passionate, quippy like he’d hoped.

But Logan won’t be put off, because she’s blond and blue eyed and _short_. And he’d always kind of figured Pixie to be a blonde...

“Biographies. Emma Orczy.”

“Emma Orczy,” echoes the girl, as though unfamiliar. “That’s the author or the subject?”

“Subject.”

She sets aside her book, pulls her keyboard closer and begins to type, glancing at the monitor to her left. “Did you have a particular biography in mind?”

“No, anything will do. English essay. Just trying to grab some quotes.”

“Oh, I see.” She clicks away on her keyboard. “Are you an English major? I only ask ‘cause my Big is an English major.” She taps the Greek letter charm on her collar bone indicatively.

“Journalism,” Logan tells her, leaning over the desk, studying carefully. “But there are a lot of English requirements. I write for the _Hearst Chronicle_.”

“Oh?” Only polite interest: “That’s nice.” She purses her lips, studies her computer screen, then smiles back at Logan. “I think I can help you after all.” She whips out a pad of Hearst Library notepaper and a green gel pen and scribbles a few numbers on a page (her fingernails are perfectly manicured, painted like pink lemonade). Then she rips the paper out and hands it over to Logan. “You’ll find that upstairs on the second floor. Take the stairs and go left: Section B.”

Logan is more interested in inspecting the note. The handwriting is wrong... rounded, bubbly figures, he’s surprised there are no hearts in the corners. He looks back up at the desk attendant, who’s smiling civilly at him. _It’s not her._

Except... maybe...

He’s promised himself to seize opportunities, if he had a glass slipper he’d be Cinderella-ing every girl on campus, but in lieu of footwear, he’s just got his gut instinct and an earnest (Dick calls it _obsessive_ ) interest in his cause.

He turns on the charm: “Thank-you, you’ve been _very_ helpful. Y’know if the librarians at Neptune Public Library had been as nice as you, I’d have read a lot more as a child.”

“Well you must’ve done all right,” replies the blonde, “I mean—journalism, and all.” She’s already picking up her book again, turning it right-side up, though her gaze is still directed at Logan. He straightens up, only to curl one palm around the edge of the desk and hook his other thumb through a belt loop.

“Nah, I bought and swindled my way into college.”

She clicks her tongue, faux shaming, but hasn’t got a retort. _It’s not her_...

He taps the counter with his hand and prepares to leave. “Well, thanks for the help...” Trails off, waiting on a name...

“Ronnie,” says the girl. “Well—Veronica. Ronnie for short.” When she says this, she pairs it with a tilt of her head that gives Logan pause. Just a quick, cute dip toward her shoulder, but it reminds him so strikingly of—okay, he’s lost it. He’s officially lost it. _Tons_ of girls tilt their heads, that doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t her. This isn’t her, because if this were her, she’d—she would acknowledge him somehow. She’d have been surprised to see him, there’d be _some reaction,_ he believes that. His heart rate quickens anyway, because that damn head tilt is just so crazy familiar...

The blonde is blinking at him, clearly waiting for something, and Logan realizes what: “Oh. Uh—Logan. Logan Echolls.” He reaches across the desk to shake her hand, which is warm and smooth but not exactly soft. And for some reason, on contact, his heart beats that much faster. _It’s not her,_ so why does he think that maybe it is?

He releases her hand, “ _Ronnie_ , huh? I was expecting _Marian._ ”

Ronnie blinks, uncomprehending. “Do I look like a Marian?”

“Madame Librarian?” he tries.

“What?”

“It’s...” He shakes his head. “Never mind. Nice to meet you, Ronnie.”

“Nice to meet you, Logan.” He turns to leave, she returns to her book, and he doesn’t know why he feels so damn disappointed. So it wasn’t her. The cute blonde in the library wasn’t Pixie, but none of his other leads have brought him to Pixie either, and it’s not like approaching random females and interrogating them is actually a good strategy. He doesn’t make a habit of doing it—for that reason, and because it’s kind of incredibly creepy—but he’d had a feeling about this girl...

But it doesn’t matter, because _it’s not her_.

Except...

“Hey.” He turns back, and Ronnie-For-Short looks up from her book, the epitome of patience, like he could come back every thirty seconds for the rest of her shift, and she would still blink and smile up at him, Jane Austen be damned. He taps the counter with two fingers, inexplicably nervous, “Hey, I was—and feel free to say ‘no,’ obviously, but I was wondering if you’d want to go out sometime?”

Ronnie—no, _Veronica_ —blushes, clearly taken aback. “Me?” she asks, and _no, the ghost standing behind you, who else? It’s not her._ _It’s_ so _not her. If it’s her, then she has the best damn poker face that has ever existed and..._ well, if anyone were to have the best damn poker face that has ever existed, it’d be _her_.

Ronnie’s gaze falters, “Well... I...”

 _Say no, say no, say no,_ he prays.

Because if she says _no_ , there’s a chance. Not that concealing a secret superhero identity is the only reason a girl would reject him, but at least he’ll know there’s a chance. Because if it _is_ her... if Theta Beta Librarian Veronica _is_ Hearst College’s masked avenger, then she’ll _have_ to turn him down. No _way_ would she risk exposing herself like that.

“I—I guess,” she says, admittedly cute shoots of color darkening in her cheeks. “Why not?” She takes another scrap of paper from the library notepad and writes down her number. Logan’s heart sinks.

It’s not her. It can’t be her.

He takes the number from her, smiles politely, and leaves.

He already knows he won’t call.

There’s nothing _wrong_ with Ronnie. More than that, she’s gorgeous. He thinks, with a twinge of guilt, the attraction may have been the source of his so-called _gut instinct_.

She’s just not the girl he’s looking for, so he’s not going to waste her time.

 

 

 

She got the name “The Pixie” because of Steve Fucking Connelly at the _Neptune Herald_ , though the christening is sometimes misattributed to Logan. That fact annoys him (he’d been gunning for “Bobcat”), but he can see why people are confused. He may write for the number _two_ student organized newspaper at a small liberal arts college, but damn it if he isn’t the only reporter who’s gotten anywhere close to Neptune’s answer to the Caped Crusader.

(If anyone _else_ were to call her that, Logan would point out that Pixie doesn’t wear a cape. She wears a black jumpsuit—no, not leather, don’t be a pervert. It’s a _cotton blend_ , one piece with an attached mask and hood. The motorcycle boots _are_ leather... but there’s no cape. She’s not a damned matador.)

Logan learned of “The Pixie” about a week before everyone else did... not because he’s some great journalist, but because his boss, Nish Sweeney, is actually pretty good at her job—better than the _Hearst Chronicle_ deserves—and she put him onto it.

 

 

 

It’s November of his freshman year, a Thursday afternoon—seventy degrees and sunny, as usual—when Nish leans against Logan’s desk, thoroughly disrupting his carefully arranged solitaire game. She kicks one heel over the other and asks: “You ever heard of a guy named Mercer Hayes?”

Logan—working at the _Chronicle_ for class credit, _not_ a love of hard-nosed fact-finding—huffs at the interruption, but nods.

“Nick Lachey hair, runs a casino out of his dorm? Yeah, I know him.”

“He says he’s getting death threats,” Nish tells him, and Logan frowns.

“So... what do you want me to do about it?”

“Uh—your job? Check it out, see if it’s legit.”

Logan rolls his eyes, put off by the downright unreasonable expectation that he do actual work. _The Hearst Chronicle_ is a joke, and he feels bad that Nish got kicked off the _Free Press_ —Hearst’s _actual_ newspaper—but he’s not about to be a part of her crusade to make the _Chronicle_ into the Washington Fucking Post. Honestly, they’ll be lucky if they hit undergrad _Enquirer_ status. Besides: “Shouldn’t he go to... like... the cops?”

To which Nish shrugs, straightening up and strolling away across the bullpen—such as it is, in the basement of the fucking _Geography_ department. “’Says he’s spooked. My roommate overheard him talking to an R.A. about it. See if there’s a story, Echolls.”

“I one hundred percent guarantee there’s not!” Logan calls after her. Completely wrong, of course.

He talks it out with Mercer the next afternoon, just so he can tell Nish he’s done it, and, turns out, Mercer _is_ spooked. He insists someone is threatening his life, won’t disclose the nature of the threats, won’t show Logan the notes, and won’t make eye contact when Logan asks the—he thinks—rather obvious question of: “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

“Look, I don’t know,” Mercer says, pissy, “But someone’s fucking following me. Like—a kid, I think. I’ll be walking back from class at night, and I turn around, and I _see_ someone there... they just keep coming at me, and I’ll shout at her, but...”

“So... just to clarify: you’re being stalked by a little girl?”

“I—I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know if she’s a kid, but I’m pretty sure it’s a chick, and she’s—she’s really fucking short.”

“Okay—one last question: have you, within the last seven days, viewed a mysterious video cassette, possibly featuring eerie, well-related imagery, and then received a phone call...”

“Fuck off, man.”

“Have you messed with a Ouija board?” Mercer is already walking away. _“Built on an Indian burial ground, perhaps?”_

The better question would have been: raped five women and shaved their heads? But of course Logan doesn’t know that at the time. No one, except the Black-Clad Mini-Stalker—the name needs work—knows that at the time. But a week later, when Mercer is found hog-tied in his next would-be victim’s room with a toy unicorn impaling his leg, while his R.A. accomplice gabs to the cops... well, then everyone knows.

“I don’t understand, Echolls,” is Nish’s response, when Logan fills her in on his theory about Mercer’s undoing, “You’re saying a poltergeist caught the Hearst Rapist?”

“ _No_ , it wasn’t a— _Mercer_ said he thought it was a kid, but have you _heard_ this girl’s statement?”

“The attempted victim?”

“No, her sister.” Logan isn’t a reporter—he _isn’t_ —but if he’s going to fake it for a semester of course credit, he sure as hell is gonna be Kolchak. Nish just gives him a look.

“You interviewed the victim’s sister?”

“Don’t start with me, Sweeney, I _don’t care_. Just... the sister says a mysterious woman called her _during the party_ , said her sister was in danger and told her to call the cops.”

“But she didn’t...”

“She thought it was a prank. And someone in the victim’s hall saw ‘a girl wearing a black hoodie,’ carrying a taser and running away from the dorm, talking on the phone, so...”

“So you think some emo kid stabbed a twenty-one year old man with a child’s toy, tased him, wrestled him into submission, then fled the scene and, I’m assuming, was responsible for the anonymous tip to the cops...?”

“Let the record show that I did not use the words ‘emo kid.’”

“...And you further think that this My Chemical Romance devotee...”

“I hate you.”

“...Had been onto Mercer for weeks, stalking and threatening him, before waiting to strike?”

“ _And_ that this Person Unknown got Moe to talk to the cops, yeah. And I realize it sounds stupid when you put it like that.”

“Write the story,” says Nish. “It’s stupid and ridiculous and probably professionally negligent, but what the hell? We’re the _Hearst Chronicle_. We’re practically the campus coupon book.”

 

 

 

And, naturally, once Logan writes that there’s a masked vigilante—he drops the “kid” aspect of the story, because he’s pretty sure Mercer was just being an idiot about that?—readership of the campus coupon book skyrockets.

Sure, most people assume that they’re going full satire, selling fake stories for laughs, but they actually have readership, and that’s something.

Really, it’s not until the cops haul Logan in for questioning, asking him about his sources and just _how did he know about Mercer Hayes’s taser burns_ , that Logan starts to wonder...

 

 

 

There’s the pizza boy who swears a masked woman saved him from a mugging on Christmas Eve.

There’s the pregnant lady who says a bandit’s bullets bounced off a girl in a cat suit during a failed carjacking.

There’s the junior in the Shuster dorm whose complaints about a scarily persistent ex end abruptly after the ex has a run-in with “some chick with red lipstick and dark sunglasses.”

 

 

They’re not sunglasses.

They’re aviator goggles. Thick, steam-punky, bronze-framed goggles, with tinted lenses, retrofitted to her mask.

The lipstick is Urban Decay Revolution.

Practically (but not _totally)_ un-smear-able.

(Logan learns later on.)

 

 

He’s the only one writing about the woman in black for almost four months, and it’s his own damn fault that he doesn’t take that opportunity to name her. The thing is, it starts out as kind of a joke to him—even though, yes, he’s pretty sure this woman exists, and he’s like ninety-nine percent positive she caught the Hearst Rapist, stopped a dozen or so other violent and non-violent crimes, and is solely responsible for any single human being ever reading Logan’s shit-show of a student newspaper (recently referred to by the student body president as “Hearst’s shame.”) Plus, it’s kind of fun hearing the crazy shit people attribute to this cat-suit-clad-co-ed. Full disclosure, that’s the main thing keeping him at the _Chronicle_ after his first semester.

(Nish won’t let him write her as “The Cat Suit Clad Co-Ed” because she says it’s sexist, which is unfortunate, because it’s way catchy.)

But as much as Logan believes in this mysterious woman, he doesn’t really _know_ —hell, he doesn’t even really know what it is he believes in until the week after spring break.

It’s a big week for the girl in black. First she saves Logan Echolls’s life. Then she hands Dean O’Dell’s murderer to the cops.

 

 

So Logan is involved in what one might label “risky business,” concerning a secret society he was—for whatever godforsaken reason—tapped to join.

The Castle was totally thrilled to welcome a son-of-a-movie-star-slash-budding-journalist into their elite ranks, but then somewhat less thrilled when said budding journalist tried to capture an audio recording of their, let’s say, unorthodox recruiting methods.

Logan doesn’t see how he’s in the wrong about that.

Nor does he think he should be punished for tracking down the identities of the people who strapped him in a shock collar and asked him highly personal questions about his colorful medical history and which recent celebrity guest-host of _Are You Stronger Than An Action Star?_ may or may not have been responsible.

 _Nor_ does he think that anyone has the right to act all offended when he finds the link between Neptune’s elite secret society and the Sorokin crime syndicate.

But Gory Sorokin takes offense anyway, and that’s bad news for Logan, turns out, when Gory and three of his douchebag brethren corner him outside Crawley’s Pub one night.

If Logan were _smart_ , he’d just let the guys get their punches in, take the bruised ribs, and hope that someone calls the cops before he bleeds out in the alley.

Logan—as his dad, and Nish, and Dick, and his sister Trina, and a handful of ex-girlfriends all like to point out—is not smart (“Self-preservation instincts of a lemming!” Carrie used to tell him), so instead of just rolling with the whole _being jumped_ thing, he fights back. Like, a good amount. Gory goes down twice, and the tall skinny dude is bleeding out his nose like a Tarantino villain, and Logan’s feeling pretty good about himself, actually, until he’s flat on his back and two of the thugs are holding him down, and Gory’s standing over him with a blade that’s probably compensating for _something_ , saying “You’re gonna die.”

“Yeah, someday,” Logan admits, because... well... lemmings and what-not. He spits blood, aims for the pavement but gets Henchman Number Two’s shoes, instead. “Oh, I am sorry,” he adds, blinking up through the streetlamp at the scowling goon lording over him, “Although, really...” He cranes to see the recently sullied trainers, “one might argue that I was doing you a favor.”

“Shut up, fucking _queer_ ,” orders Gory, and then he’s hunched over, knife to Logan’s neck, and Logan is starting to believe that _someday_ might be today after all. “No one’s ever going find your fucking body. Just like your whore mother.”

Once again, Logan hardly sees how he can be blamed if he takes the opportunity of Gory’s proximity to spit in his face.

But that really peeves Gory, and Logan feels the cool steel of the blade on his skin and a prickle of sharp pain mingling with the pressure of Gory’s fist, and then—

And then Henchman Number One—the guy waiting in the wings, still nursing a bloody nose—lets out this blood-curdling screech, and, with a crackle of visible electricity, goes down.

“ _What the f...?”_ is all Gory gets out before he hits the ground too. Henchman Number Two, with the bloody spit tennis shoes, gets what Logan thinks is a combat boot to the face, just seconds before the third guy gets one to the stomach.

It’s _her_.

Logan knows this before he gets a clear view of her, while he’s scrambling up off his back, out of her way, because she’s making sure Henchmen Numbers One through Three stay the fuck _down_. She’s just a shadowy shape in the dim glow of distant lights, moving so quickly, so efficiently to deal with these assholes that Logan—he’s not proud to admit—honestly just watches her for about five seconds.

Then he realizes that such behavior is kind of on the lazy side, even for _him_ , and he hurls Spit Shoes against the brick alley wall so that the guy doesn’t have the chance to get his ass kicked for a second (or maybe third?) time.

Spit Shoes is holding his hands up in surrender— _don’t hurt me, c’mon, I was just doing Gorya a favor, man!_ —while She’s throwing Bloody Nose onto his belly, cuffing his wrists behind his back, and Numero Three is on his side, groaning somewhere in the vicinity of the dumpsters. Only then does Logan think he should probably take inventory of the ringleader of his little band of ruffians—

He realizes this a second too late.

Gory’s rising up on his knees, and while She’s distracted making sure Bloody Nose stays put, he raises the knife and plunges it into her leg.

“ _No!_ ” cries Logan, completely useless, and he dives at Gory, but the woman is faster, grabbing Gory’s wrist and yanking it back, giving her a clear angle to push the sole of her shoe into his chest and pin him to the ground.

Gory kind of whines and snivels for a second, and while she’s standing there over him, Logan gets his first good look at her.

She _is_ tiny.

Five foot three, maybe, and that’s in clunky boots.

She’s _clearly_ not a child, though, she’s got—uh, grown-up shape, and she’s fucking short, yes, but not _that_ short. Her outfit is black from head to toe, a tight mask covers the top part of her face, everything except the very tip of her nose and part of cheeks and her jaw and her lips. Her _lips_ , which are bright, _radiant_ red. The mask connects to the neck of her jumpsuit—it’s all one piece, a _cowl_ —and goggles cover her eyes: thick frames and dark lenses ( _how does she see in this lighting—are they night-vision?_ ). There’s a second hood—that’s where the witness from the Mercer Hayes case got the _hoodie_ thing, probably, because it’s loose and wide and connected to the epaulettes at her shoulders. Her boots have thick rubber soles and lace past her ankles, and her gloves are this complicated—as far as Logan can tell, _unnecessarily_ complicated—system of finger-less cotton layered over full-fingered leather.

She has this black chunky belt, hooked onto which is something that looks like a taser, but there are several other compartments...

A utility belt!

A fucking utility belt, God bless this fucking woman, she has a utility belt.

And very nice hips, which is the sort of thing Logan would probably spend more time reflecting on if it weren’t for the fact that there’s also a five inch blade sticking out of her thigh.

“Holy shit!” he says, _most_ _cleverly_ , when he realizes this fact. The woman turns to him, red lips frowning.

She stares at Logan for a second, still pinning a groaning Gory to the pavement, and then she tilts her head in this _what-the-fuck_ kind of way and jerks her chin towards the street.

“Run, you _idiot!_ ”

She has a wonderful voice—sarcastic, sharp—but he has literally no intention of obeying, because once again:

“You have a fucking knife in your leg!”

“What?” she asks dimly, “Oh.” She yanks it out as though it were a splinter and tosses it aside, then releases Gory and turns to Logan. She puts her hands on her hips—which, now that the knife is removed from her leg, he can better appreciate—and considers him for two seconds. Then she says: “Call the cops,” turns, and takes off.

Which simply will not do.

He sprints after her, but she is—she is _damn fast_. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given what Logan just witnessed—given everything he knows about her, but it is seriously inconvenient, because he would really like to sit down and talk to this woman about... well, a lot of things. Topping off that list: the fact that five inch blades don’t have much effect on her hamstrings. A close second: whatever childhood trauma led her to go all Dark Knight.

“Wait up! Hey, wait up!” He yanks out his cell phone, dials 911, and barks: “Hey, there’s been a gang fight in the alley on Second Street and—uh, Leeman. Outside Big Guy’s Liquor. They’ll need an ambulance,” before really throwing himself into the whole pursuit of the girl in black. She disappears between two buildings down the block, and by the time Logan gets there, she’s halfway up the fire escape.

She’s not even climbing the stairs. She’s scaling the side like a damn ninja.

“C’mon, give a guy a break!” he shouts after her, and he thinks he can make out a shout of laughter, but he’s too busy taking the steps three at a time to be sure.

He reaches the top in what would be record time if she hadn’t just completely shown him up, and she’s still there, which is itself remarkable, though she’s clear at the other end of the building.

“Hey!” he calls after her, and she turns, obviously surprised. Like she hadn’t thought he’d follow her this far. Honestly, he’s a little surprised himself, because sure, he’s not dead, but he did kind of take a beating before the girl showed up, so it’s probably pure adrenaline keeping him together at this point. He’s huffing and puffing as he makes his way over to her, but she’s climbing up on the ledge before he’s halfway there, leaping to the adjacent rooftop while he’s still ten feet off. She does this fancy flip twirl thing in the air and lands just _beautifully,_ like a damn Olympic gymnast, on the other side of the significant gap.

Logan rushes to the edge of his own building, another “Hey, wait a minute!” on his lips as he climbs up onto the ledge himself.

The girl, moving away on the other rooftop, pauses. “What the hell are you doing, you idiot?” she calls to him. “Get down from there, you’re going to kill yourself.”

“ _You_ did it,” he points out, not entirely sure of himself. Not even mostly sure of himself.

“Now is _not_ the time for male chauvinism, buddy!” she calls back, “I can actually _make_ that jump, and even if I couldn’t, if I fall and break my back, my spine sorts itself out in about fifteen seconds. I’m guessing yours hasn’t developed that particular skill.”

She’s right; it hasn’t. Though that would’ve been a useful trait growing up in the House of Echolls.

“First of all,” he calls back between deep, heaving breaths. He holds up a hand to give himself a moment and then finishes: “Is there _ever_ a time for male chauvinism? I mean, _really_.”

The woman tosses her head in a way that makes him think she’s rolling her eyes. “I’m leaving,” she informs him, half-turning to do so, and Logan shouts:

“Then I guess I’m gonna have to try and make this jump!”

She pauses. Stands sideways, looking at him over her shoulder, her red lips pulled to a point. “I don’t believe you.”

Logan grins, braces himself. “I don’t know, I think I can make this.”

Maybe “think” is putting it strongly. Hope? It’s—it’s a definite _maybe_. He’s pretty tall, got pretty long limbs... He frowns, considering, and the girl stays put, arms folded over her belly.

“You’re not going to do it,” she says.

“I’m gonna do it,” he says, squats a little.

“You’re bluffing.”

“Come over here and find out?”

“Not on your life.”

“Fine.”

So he bends his knees more and readies himself, gives her one last appealing look, to which she tilts her chin defiantly, and then he leaps.

“Holy _shit!_ ” she shrieks.

He totally nails it.

Sort of.

Well, okay, actually, he just barely manages to scrape the brick ledge with his fingertips. His whole body smacks into the wall, and he dangles off the side of the building, holding on by one hand, his ribs _aching_ , while the girl curses furiously at him, even as she helps drag him up and over onto the rooftop.

“You are a fucking lunatic!” she accuses, once he’s up to safety—sprawled out on his back on the cement floor, breathing deeply, but alive nonetheless. “I can’t believe you jumped!”

“I can’t believe you let me jump!” he accuses right back. “What kind of superhero _are_ you, anyway?”

“I never said I was a superhero!”

“Oh, you just wear a mask and run around saving people. Nothing like a superhero there!”

“Gah, I should’ve let that fucker stab you.” She throws up her hands. “I’m leaving.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, wait!” Logan scrambles to his feet, chases after her as she stalks towards the opposite end of the building. “Wait, I’m sorry, thank-you! Thank-you for saving my life! Twice, actually, because I was seriously about to fall just now, so _thank-you!_ ”

She keeps walking. “You’re welcome. Now go away.”

“I’m Logan, what’s your name?”

“No.”

“That’s lovely, is it a family name?” She ignores him completely. “I write about you!” he calls, and then she pauses. Looks at him over her shoulder.

“You write about me?”

“Yeah, for the _Hearst Chronicle_.”

There’s a beat, then: “ _The coupon book_?”

“Yes, I—no, it’s not a _coupon_ book, dammit. It’s a newspaper. With a substantial coupon section.”

She laughs, he loves it.

“Hey, there is over seventy-five dollars worth of savings in that coupon section,” he tells her, and she’s busy enough laughing that he gets within fifteen feet of her. She calms down, and he halts, holds his hands up in surrender. “I come in peace.”

“What do you mean you write about me?” she says. “You don’t even know who I am.”

Now’s the time for something really clever, something that shows he’s on her side, that she can trust him, something that gets her attention and holds it long enough for him to convince her to sit down and have a conversation with him. Something like...

“Mercer Hayes thought you were a child.”

“What?”

“He thought a child was stalking him. ‘Cause you’re so short.”

“I’m leaving now.”

“No, wait, I’m sorry, don’t go!” She climbs up onto the ledge of the building. “I didn’t mean it!”

“Goodbye!”

“But how do I get in touch with you?”

“ _God_ , no.”

Then she jumps. He’s at the edge in time to see her land on top of a dumpster. She flips immediately onto the ground, where she pauses, stretches like she has a kink in her neck, and then is on her merry way.

“I love you!” he calls, melodramatic, after her. He’s like—ninety-eight percent joking, but she laughs as she jogs off into the night.

 

 

When she turns Tim Foyle in for the murder of Cyrus O’Dell, two things happen: one, Logan becomes convinced that this girl is a Hearst student, and two, fucking Steve fucking Connelly at the fucking _Neptune Herald_ coins her superhero identity: _The Pixie._

After she leaves the Neptune Sheriff’s department all the evidence they need against Foyle, the cops can’t even manage to do the one part of their job that shouldn’t be an issue: arresting a bird-boned academic. Pixie even takes care of that, putting an efficient end to Foyle’s attempted flight with a crowbar.

The only problem is that this goes down in a crowded corridor in Kirby Hall, so people _see_ her when it happens, and the _Neptune Herald_ is on the story within twenty-four hours.

And then the rest of the vultures start to circle.

 

 

Suddenly “Pixie” is everywhere.

_Pixie took out some creep following me in the parking lot._

_Pixie stopped a purse thief._

_Pixie slashed the tires on a bank-robber’s getaway car._

_Pixie busted up a ring of meth dealers._

 

 

 _The New York Times_ is covering this shit, and sure, that’s bad news for the _Hearst Chronicle_ , but people do, surprisingly, notice that Logan—writing under a penname, not for anonymity, but because he thought it’d be fun to write as Tiberius Fairchild—has been documenting the Pixie for _months_ longer than anyone else. Anderson Cooper and Larry King want to interview him (he declines, has Nish go for him). _Hearst Free Press_ offers him a job (declines that too). Sheriff Lamb and Mayor Goodman haul him back down to the County Courthouse to see if he has any clues about Pixie’s real identity.

He doesn’t.

Wouldn’t give them to Lamb and Goodman if he _did_ , though.

His theory is that she’s a Hearst student, because a third of known Pixie encounters occur on or around Hearst campus. Logan knows, because he has a chart. With _graphs._

Plus, maybe the Mercer Hayes case could be chalked up to local interest, but Logan feels that her investigation of the Dean’s murder suggests personal involvement. Like, she has a protective instinct about the campus.

It’s just his theory, at least until he finally sees her again.

 

 

 

That happens in June.

The semester ends, and Carrie comes home. They make a two week go of it, remember all the reasons they were a disaster, and then she jets off to New York and Logan is left in Neptune, dodging his father’s phone calls and trying to fill time.

One way he fills time is with the police scanner he purchases. He tells Dick it’s so he won’t get caught speeding, but really it’s a (pretty silly) stab at seeing Pixie again.

(He really hates that name. Pixie. And he hates fucking Steve Fucking Connelly who came up with it. Fuck that guy.)

Usually if the cops are involved, it means that Pixie has already come and gone, so Logan knows that even listening in is a shot in the dark. Short of _committing actual crimes,_ though, he’s got no other leads for tracking her down. So he’s out and about one night, stopping for—he’s not proud of this—7-Eleven taquitos on his way home from Enbom’s homecoming party. When he gets in the car and switches on the scanner, just to check it out, he hears the magic words:

“— _Two-Eleven underway and, uh, we got a possible sighting of the—uh—the Pixie? Please advise, over.”_

_“What’s your location, over.”_

_“Sack n’ Pack on Claremont, over.”_

_“Copy. Back up is on the way. Over.”_

Logan is on the way too.

There’s a black and white police cruiser sitting outside the convenience store when he arrives, but he doesn’t think the back-up is there yet, and—

And holy _shit_. Logan just pulls up across the street, not even in the lot, and even he can see that this is... this is a serious situation. The Sack n’ Pack is all windows and fluorescent lighting, and it’s dark outside, so he has a pretty clear view of the scene inside. There’s a clerk, some high school kid probably, and a guy with a mask waving a gun, and _her_. She’s there, standing at the far end of the store, holding her hands up like she’s appealing to the robber, while he keeps his gun trained in the general direction of the kid. That’s why she hasn’t acted, Logan thinks. She’s fast, but not like... superhuman fast. She’s not scared of getting shot (for obvious reasons), but she doesn’t want to get anybody _else_ shot.

But when three more police cruisers show up, sirens a-blaring, all hell breaks loose. There’s a gunshot, the shattering of glass, and Logan just instinctively hops out of his car. Pixie’s on the move inside, the uniforms are rushing the door, and then suddenly there’s darkness in the shop. The lights just go out—maybe the thief shoots the fluorescent overheads—and Logan takes three steps towards the building before remembering that he doesn’t really have much to offer this situation, aside from providing another target.

They’re going to catch her, he realizes. He doesn’t know why that bothers him so much, except that he genuinely thinks of Pixie as a _good guy_ , and if there’s one way to ruin a good thing, it’s to get Don Lamb and the Neptune Sheriff’s department involved.

There’s no other way out of the shop except the front doors, though, no way for her to escape...

Except...

Logan has been drunk in this very Sack n’ Pack probably three times, and he knows there’s a bathroom in the back. And, if memory serves, there’s a high, narrow window in said bathroom; _he_ would never fit through it, sure, but Pixie could.

He climbs back into his car at once, drives top speed around to the back of the building and pulls up along the curb, breaks screeching. He arrives just in time to see a pair of skinny black legs wiggling through the window, flailing around in the air for a moment, before a slight figure drops to the ground. Her.

Logan rolls down the window and waves frantically at her, and she actually takes two steps towards him—a reflex movement, most likely—before she stops, shakes herself, and starts to jog in another direction.

“Come on, hurry!” Logan whisper-shouts, maybe ten yards off, and Pixie hesitates again. More sirens ring through the night, there’s shouting from within the store, and she makes up her mind. She sprints over to Logan’s car and hops in the front seat.

“ _You_ ,” she sighs, weary, as Logan slams the gas and gets them the hell out of there.

“Me? Yes, _me_ , what’s that supposed to mean? I just saved your ass,” he points out, and Pixie scoffs, an incredulous _ha_ from deep in her throat.

“I was _fine_.”

“You had no exit strategy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Then why’d you get in my car?”

Pixie scowls, red lips pursed.

“You can take off your mask you know,” Logan points out, “We’re inside, and I won’t tell.”

“No thanks. Drop me at the corner here.”

“Don’t be stupid, there are cops everywhere. Do you live on campus?” She doesn’t reply. “Give it up, I know you’re Hearst.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Am I wrong?”

She exhales loudly, doesn’t answer his question, just chews on her bottom lip and says: “Fine, take me to Hearst, I don’t care. And stay on your side of the console.” She adjusts her hood, like she thinks he might make a grab for it.

“Please, you’d snap my wrist if I did anything else,” Logan says, and he’s glad to see the ends of her mouth twitch in response to that. “So how did you get started in this racket, huh?” he asks, and Pixie clicks her tongue at him.

“This isn’t an interview.”

“Really? ‘Cause I’m already composing it in my head. _We sit in my car... a Range Rover, 2006, the city lights glancing through the windows en route to the liberal arts college she calls home..._ ”

“You’re incredibly annoying.”

“It’s part of my charm. So... the crime fighting business? What happened? You find a decoder ring in a cereal box and just figure—what the hell?”

Pixie snorts, stares out the window, and those goggles _must_ be night vision. Unless she’s like... telepathic or something. “I wish. That would be adorable.” She turns her head back to him. “How’d you get into the getaway driver racket?”

“Me? Oh, I’m just a girl who _cain’t say ‘no,’_ I guess.”

She laughs. “That so, _Ado Annie_?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey, you lied to me, when last we spoke,” Pixie goes on.

“That’s quite possible,” Logan admits. “I lie a lot. I didn’t say I was a Sagittarius, did I? I’ve been spinning that one a lot lately for some reason.”

“You said you wrote about me,” she continues, ignoring his jokes. “But I looked it up, and the only _Hearst Chronicle_ journalist writing about me at the time was someone named Tiberius Fairchild, and _you_ said your name was _Logan_.”

Logan laughs, he can’t help himself, and she’s grinning at him too—which is a little off-putting, given the goggles and all, but still charming. “I _did_ lie. My name is actually Tiberius Fairchild. Well, Tiberius Fairchild the Third, to be precise...”

“Oh God, there are two more of you?”

“More to love, Pix.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s the worst, isn’t it?” Logan agrees sagely, and Pixie scowls.

“Fucking Steve Connelly,” she grumbles.

“I wanted to call you ‘The Bobcat.’”

“Pervert.”

“How is that perverted?”

“I don’t know, but it sounds perverted when _you_ say it.”

Logan snickers. “I can’t win, can I? Of course, if you gave me a name to work with...”

“No.”

“You know there’s a book that I think you would benefit from...”

“If you say _The Power of Yes,_ I swear to God...”

“It’s called _The Power of Yes_ , and...”

“You are the most annoying person I have ever met,” she tells him, “And I know someone whose favorite song is _Far Away_.”

“You need cooler friends, Pixie. Might I recommend myself? Encyclopedic knowledge of musicals, and I’m breaking into the Getaway Driver biz.”

“Tempting as that may be...”

They drive in silence for a few blocks, and Logan goes with it because he’s a little overwhelmed by the fact that he actually _found_ her, that she’s here in his car and that he can speak with her. He doesn’t want to waste the opportunity, but in his anxiety about _that_ , he’s panicking, which just makes conversation all the more difficult.

They stop at a light, and Logan asks: “So how do you do it? Track down criminals, I mean. I’m gonna assume the whole _indestructible_ thing is above my pay grade.”

“Why, you looking to strap on a cape?” She taps the window with the nail side of one gloved finger.

“Just curious. I was the beneficiary of your sleuthing once before, if you recall.”

She shrugs. “You oh-niners all blur together.”

“I was the one singing my devotion from the rooftops.”

She smirks. She’s quiet for a moment, settling some internal debate. “I’ve been tracking that guy for a while, actually.”

“The robber?”

“He’s—he’s a sick guy,” she tells him. “Messed up in the head. Name’s Tommy Dohanic.”

Wait a minute: “ _Lucky?”_

She turns to him, surprised. “You know him?”

“Yeah, he used to work at my high school. Bought booze for those of us who were too recognizable to get away with fake IDs.”

“Of _course.”_

“Why are you tracking Lucky?” Logan wants to know. The girl is facing him, and Logan wishes he could see her actual face, but he bets she’s studying him.

“He’s—he’s connected to something bigger.

“Could you be more specific?”

“No.”

“Once again...”

“Stop.”

They’re nearing campus, and Pixie directs him to pull up near the south gate. “Look,” says Logan, in a last ditch effort to prolong interaction with this woman, “Can I interview you sometime?”

“No.”

He stops the car. “Date you?”

“No.”

“Dedicate a fan-site to you?”

“No.”

“I’m really feeling the rejection, y’know. This is how nemeses are made, Bobcat.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re the worst?” she counters, opening the car door.

“My dad writes it on my birthday card every year.”

She climbs out of the car, but doesn’t walk away immediately. “Thanks for the ride,” she tells him, “But—this doesn’t mean I owe you anything. You get that, right? I saved your life twice.”

Logan frowns, because he doesn’t think she’s bantering. She’s waiting for an answer, like she’s seriously concerned about the issue. He shakes his head, says sincerely: “I don’t think you owe me anything.”

Pixie nods. “Okay. Goodnight.” She closes the door and runs off.

(Of course Logan watches to see what direction she takes, but she just heads deeper into campus, disappears behind the Kane Life Sciences Building, and he’s pretty sure she’s using evasive maneuvers anyway.)

 

 

 

Logan next hears from her a couple of days later, when he’s picking up breakfast at Java the Hut. He spent the morning surfing with home-for-the-summer childhood BFF Duncan, but Duncan has family obligations for the rest of the day, and Logan’s got an incredibly busy schedule of absolutely nothing. So he’s just finished paying for his coffee and doughnut, when his cell lights up with a call from a blocked number. He frowns, but answers anyway:

“Hello?”

There’s a sigh first. Then her voice: “You can interview me.”

He nearly chokes on his doughnut. “Bobcat _?_ ” he asks, giddy with the certainty that it’s her.

“I am already regretting this,” she grumbles, and he hurries out of the Hut.

“I can interview you? When? Today?”

“No—uh... next week.”

“That’s no good, the _Chronicle_ only does monthly issues during summer session,” he tells her. “We print Monday.”

“That sounds like a _you_ problem.”

“Well then I guess I can’t interview you.” He grins at the sputtering sounds she makes in response to that.

“Two day ago you were practically _begging_ me for an interview. You’re bluffing.”

Logan takes another bite of doughnut. “Hey, remember when I jumped off that roof?”

She groans. “This is a terrible idea. _Fine_. Tomorrow night work for you, Princess?”

“Tomorrow night works for me,” he agrees. “Where do you want to meet?”

“You know Prince Hall on campus?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Meet me on the roof at ten o’clock.”

“Won’t it be locked?”

“There’s a door to the maintenance level under the stairs to the south entrance that doesn’t lock. You can get to the elevators from there, and I’ll make sure the door to the roof is open. Don’t bring a camera, and come _alone_.”

 

 

 

“What the hell are those?” Pixie demands, when Logan arrives on the roof of the Prince Anthropology building at ten o’clock the following night.

“Seating.” He holds up two cushions, the kind he remembers sitting on during story time in elementary school, with the square plastic bottoms. He grins at the way her lower lip wobbles in disbelief. It’s remarkable how much she can express with just her mouth and her chin. She’s sitting on the hard rooftop floor, back against a skylight, but she catches the cushion that Logan tosses to her, and, after a long deliberating moment, stuffs it underneath her.

Logan sets his own cushion down a couple of feet away from her, takes his seat, and situates himself, rummaging through his messenger bag for a few necessities.

“What’s in there?” she demands, suspicious.

“Cheese-Its.”

Pixie snorts. “Wow, you sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

“I felt like you would be unimpressed by champagne and caviar.”

“You’re wrong, I have very refined tastes.”

“Duly noted. I’ll bring a bottle of _Dom Perignon_ next time.”

She rejects his offer of snacks, and he takes out a notebook, a pen, and a tape recorder. The last, he waves at her: “Yes or no?”

“I... no.”

“No problem.” And he tosses the recorder back in his bag. “I have perfect memory.”

She doesn’t say anything, and Logan once again gets the feeling that she’s rolling her eyes. He wishes he knew for sure.

“So, question number one,” he begins, “ _who_ is making you submit to an interview?”

Her mouth actually drops open, and he enjoys having surprised her. “That’s your first question?” she asks skeptically, but Logan just nods.

“Yeah.”

“N-no one.” Insolent. “I _want_ to do this.”

“I’ve met you twice, and I can only see a fraction of your face, and even _I_ can tell that you’d rather be headlining a Nickelback themed karaoke night than sitting here with me, so...”

She scoffs, pouts, crosses her arms and looks away, does her very best to act as though Logan’s estimation is totally off-base, but she can’t quite pull it off. So she sighs. “My dad.”

“Your dad?” He lights up. “So your father knows about all... this?” He gestures; she nods.

“Does anyone else know?”

She nods again.

“Who? Mom? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Fiancée, whom you’re only pretending to love for vague superhero reasons?”

“My best friend,” she says. “But just those two. I...” She breaks off, frowns. “Hey, maybe don’t write that part about my dad? Could we take that off the record? Because if I get caught or arrested and you print that my dad and my friend know about— _Pixie_ , they could be charged as accomplices, so...”

Logan snorts. “I’m beginning to see why you chose _me_ to interview you instead of an actual—y’know, reporter.”

“What do you mean?”

“You figure I’m sucker enough to do whatever you say.”

She shrugs.

“Fine. All right. It’s stricken from the record. But _on_ the record: no significant other?”

“You _know_ I could kick your ass, right? Like—that hasn’t somehow escaped your notice?”

“Question number two: are you an alien?”

“Am I an—? No, of course not.”

“Good. I bet a kid from my Poly Sci class five bucks that you’re human.” He tosses a handful of Cheese-Its into his mouth. “So why _are_ you the way that you are? Genetics? Lab experiment gone wrong?”

“Maybe it’s Maybelline?”

“Is it?”

She considers the question, answers enigmatically: “High school was rough.”

Logan frowns. “Copy that. So what can you do?”

She shifts, uncomfortable, moves her feet to the side. “What do you mean? You know what I can do. Everyone and their Cousin Suzy knows what I can do. Faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, yada yada yada.”

Logan rolls his eyes. “You can’t fly,” he says. “You’re indestructible or virtually indestructible, but despite what fucking Steve Connelly at the _Neptune Herald_ thinks, you can’t fly, you don’t have superhuman speed, and I don’t _think_ you have super strength.”

“Do you want to test that theory?” she snaps, arms folded, adversarial.

“You’d kick my ass handily, no question,” Logan admits. “But I’d arm-wrestle you. Two semesters of weightlifting, y’know.”

She disregards his offer. “What makes you so sure, anyway?”

“You use a taser, for one.”

“Steve Connelly at the _Neptune Herald_ thinks that’s because I don’t want to hurt people with disproportionate force.”

“Well _I_ think it’s been established that Steve Connelly is an idiot,” Logan reminds her. “And when you helped me up onto that roof, I had to do some of the work.”

“Maybe I just like watching you suffer.”

“When the tree branch fell on that woman’s car during the storm last month, you made a pulley to get it off.” He could go all night, if it’s evidence that Pixie is looking for. He has _graphs_ about this shit. He’s done _research_.

Pixie stills. “How did you know that?”

She asks a fair question, because the woman in the car was unconscious and the pulley was dismantled by the time anyone else showed up at the scene. The only witness was the little kid in the backseat, and he’d sworn “The Pixie” had flown in and blasted the branch out of the way with her laser eyes.

“I found the wire and the marks on the branch,” says Logan. “It wasn’t easy.”

She’s mute for a few seconds, and when she speaks, Logan has the distinct impression that something has changed in the air between them. “You didn’t write that,” she almost accuses. “In your piece about the storm, you didn’t mention the pulley.”

Logan shrugs. The reality is that he debated with himself for _days_ whether he should write everything he found. Words like _journalistic integrity_ floated through his brain, unbidden and resilient even when confronted with the knowledge that he was writing for the freaking _Hearst Chronicle._ On the other hand, there was the fact of this girl, _Pixie,_ who ran around and had people shooting, stabbing, doing God knows what else to her, and yeah, she could obviously take it, but at the end of the day, maybe she was better off if the bad guys assumed she had superhuman strength, too.

“Well, it’s a better story if you can just toss giant tree branches aside like they’re kindling,” he says.

There’s another long beat of silence, and he can’t tell what she’s thinking at all, if she believes his excuse or if she’s figured him out. He suspects the latter when she finally begins again, non-sequitur: “My dad thinks I need better P.R.”

“What? Why? You’re _Neptune’s Heroine_. Your P.R. is great. Everyone loves you.”

“Not everyone.”

“Well there are quite a few _more_ fans since the _Times_ got that picture of you in silhouette.” He winks, and she sticks out her tongue.

“I’m—I’m working on a project right now,” she says carefully, “and Dad thinks that if people can relate to me a little more, then... when everything’s out in the open, they’ll be more... receptive.”

“To the—project?” Logan has no idea what any of this means, but he nods. “Does this have to do with whatever Lucky Dohanic is connected to?”

“You can’t write about any of this.”

“You are the most frustrating person I’ve ever interviewed.”

“Have you even interviewed anyone before?”

“ _Yes_... but, fair enough, mostly I just make it all up. That’s what I plan to do here, y’know. You’re going to be hitting on me a lot more in the print version of this conversation.”

They do, eventually, manage to have _some_ on-the-record dialogue:

“Are you immortal?”

“I age.”

“Can _anything_ kill you for good?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Lost limbs?”

“I don’t know, but my thumb grew back once.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You asked.”

“Does it hurt?”

“My thumb?”

“Any of it: the bullets, the knives. Do you feel pain?”

“No.”

“What about pleasure?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just asking, would you theoretically find it pleasurable to... sit in a hot tub?”

“You’re asking about sex.”

“Now, see, I don’t know why you had to go and bring sex into the conversation.”

“ _I_ didn’t bring sex into this, _you_ did.”

“Me? No. No, that doesn’t sound like me at all.”

_..._

“I enjoy hot tubs a _great_ deal.”

 _.._.

“Duly noted.”

_…_

“Wait—please don’t write that down. My _dad’s_ gonna read this.”

“Jesus _Christ_ , woman.”

Things wind down around one o’clock, because Pixie insists that she has to get some actual work done tonight.

“I’m gonna have follow-up questions,” he tells her, as she gets stiffly to her feet—ignoring his offered hand except to smack the cushion seat into it.

“I guess you’ll have to invent the answers to those, too,” she sighs, falsely sympathetic.

“C’mon—one more night.” Logan pouts and rounds his eyes. Pixie puts her hands on her hips. “Two tops. Three at the _absolute_ maximum.”

“You’re out of your mind,” she says, walking towards the edge of the building.

“At least tell me how I can reach you,” Logan pleads. “I’m highly irresponsible, I’ll probably be in mortal peril again by the end of the week.” She snickers but hesitates at the ledge. Logan hitches his bag up on his shoulder and takes a few steps closer. “You’re not going to make me build a Klieg light with Tinkerbell on it, are you?”

“You’d do it, too.”

“I’ve already started the diagrams.” He comes up and stands next to her at the edge. She’s grinning down at the ground far below, at the dark maze of paths between buildings, the neatly tended lawns that look blue in the moonlight. Hearst is quiet at night and near silent during the summer.

“Fine,” she surrenders at length. “Give me your notepad.”

He does—and a black pen—and she writes down a phone number. “It’s untraceable,” she tells him. “And it won’t lead you back to my day-time identity, if that’s what you’re thinking. And it’s _only_ for emergencies.”

Logan nods, beaming at the notebook in his hand. “Emergencies like—the unbelievable savings you’ll find in this month’s coupon section of the _Hearst Chronicle_?”

“Emergencies like—you’re tied up and dangling over a shark tank.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“So I guess I won’t be hearing from you.” She swings one leg over the building’s ledge, then the other, and begins this complicated crawl downward, using the uneven stones of the building, the window-ledges, the detail molding, the balconies, whatever she can reach, until she arrives close enough to the bottom that she doesn’t mind jumping.

_Like hell she can’t feel pain._

She pauses on the ground, and it’s a good distance away, but there’s a lamp on the side of the building that gives Logan a clear enough image of her, looking back up at him. He waves once, but she doesn’t respond, just turns and runs off into the tree cover.

 

 

 

“I said this number was for _emergencies,_ Echolls.”

“I think my readership would consider this an emergency.”

“ _What_ readership?”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“Your question was ‘ _who’s my designer._ ’”

“Wait, let me guess... Calvin Klein: _Vigilante._ ”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait, that was a joke. The shoes are obviously Doc Martens.”

“Good- _bye.”_

“What about the lipstick?”

“Urban Decay Revolution F-Bomb.”

“Of _course_.”

“And who exactly is supposed to care about what lipstick I’m wearing?”

“The devil’s in the details, Bobcat.”

“I regret this so much.”

 

 

 

“So is your decision to assume this role as Neptune’s protector an implicit criticism of local law enforcement?”

“Wait, who am I speaking to?”

“Um—still Logan? Echolls...?”

“No. No, it can’t be. That sounded like—that _almost_ resembled a legitimate journalistic inquiry.”

“Ha _ha_.”

“Aw, did I hurt your feelings?”

“I have no feelings. Are you gonna answer any of my questions?”

“If I stop answering, will you stop calling?”

“So I’m gonna mark you down as a _yes_ for the criticism of local law enforcement.”

 

 

 

“Do you have a comment on rumors of a copycat?”

“What?”

“The guy in the leather mask keeping the Fitzpatricks out of the barrio.”

She laughs: “I’ll say he’d _kill_ anyone who called him a ‘copycat.’”

“So you _do_ know him?”

“We run in similar circles.”

“Is it true he lifted a 1968 Mustang over his head?”

“It was a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda.”

“Steve Connelly is going to write that they call him _El Escarabajo.”_

“Steve Connelly should invest in a bodyguard. He goes by ‘Weevil.’”

“God, why?”

“Well _I’m_ not gonna be the one to ask.”

 

 

 

“Logan, the interview printed like three weeks ago. You can’t possibly have more follow-up questions.”

“At least tell me your major.”

“No.”

“Your sign?”

“No.”

“Did you have anything to do with Epsilon Chi getting shut down for the two-way mirror?”

“Yes.”

“So is your dad cool with your P.R. situation?”

“I still don’t owe you.”

“I’m not asking for favors.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing. Asking me all these questions so you can write about it in your little newspaper...”

“C’mon, you know that’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

“Maybe I just like talking to you.”

“You... Logan...”

“What?”

...

“ _Fine._ Sagittarius.”

“Are you lying?”

“...Yes.”

 

 

 

“How’d you get my phone number, anyway?”

“What?”

“When you called to tell me you’d do the interview, how’d you get my phone number?”

“My fingers spontaneously regenerate, and you’re curious how I got your _phone_ number?”

“It’s pretty hard to get my cell. I know. That’s intentional, by the way.”

“I’m resourceful.”

“Stalker.”

“Oh, you should talk, Kolchak.”

 

 

                                               

“You’re calling _me_?”

“I... yeah, so what? You call me three times a week, Logan, I can’t call you _one_ time?”

“You can call me whenever you want, I’m just surprised.”

“Are you gonna help me or not?”

“You need my _help?”_

“Get together everything you have on the Castle and meet me on the roof of Prince Hall.”

“Who says I have anything on the Castle?”

“Can you make it in twenty minutes?”

“ _You_ need _my_ help.”

“Oh, there’ll just be no living with you now.”

 

 

 

So that’s how the summer goes. They talk two or three, and then up to four times a week. She _texts_ him sometimes, and that’s bizarre, texting a masked vigilante, but Logan’s not going to complain because he’s starting to crush pretty ridiculously on this girl.

His interview with her is a huge success (the _Neptune Herald_ offers him a job, he declines), and he knows it’s because he kind of adores her, and everything he writes about her is the most fun thing he’s ever done.

There’s a squad car parked outside his apartment some nights, like the cops think she might show up to _hang out_ with him, and—more than it bothers him—Logan wishes they were right. Sheriff Lamb is quoted calling her a “slut with a stun gun,” which pisses off half the town and pleases the rest. Nish writes an impassioned denouncement of the sheriff that gets quoted and cited and reiterated all over the web for _weeks_. Mayor Goodman is more politically intelligent than Lamb—he’s on every local news segment, saying that the Pixie is a _friend_ of Neptune’s boys in brown, of the local government, of the _county supervisor._ He heavily implies that he’s got a strong personal friendship with her, which Logan finds particularly hilarious, since Pixie staunchly denies it.

 

 

 

“So Woody’s not a goodie? Damn, those campaign signs were misleading.”

“I’m serious, Logan, stay away from that guy. He’s a creep.”

“Can I write that?”

“ _No_.”

“You suck.”

 

 

 

So the summer passes, July turning to August, and the new school year rapidly approaches. Logan is registered for classes, has been tragically unsuccessful in convincing Pixie to tell him what _she’s_ enrolled in, but can’t quite defeat the sliver of hope that he’ll somehow just stumble across her now that they’ll both be spending a nice chunk of their day-lit hours in the same place. 

 

 

“Okay, but just hypothetically, what would you do if I _did_ meet you in class?”

“Who says you haven’t?”

“Impossible. The only person I know who fits your description is my mousy, spectacled sidekick, who always mysteriously disappears whenever you show up... _hey wait a minute_...”

 

 

 

Then, about two and a half weeks before classes begin, she goes dark.

She just stops taking his calls, and at first it doesn’t bother Logan too much, because she’s busy, sure, he knows that. Living two lives—one of which involves fighting crime—is a lot of work, so for a couple of days he chalks it up to bad timing and tries not to feel offended that she doesn’t even shoot him a _Catch ya later_ text.

But then it’s a week since he’s heard from her at all, and as far as he can tell, at least that long since anyone else has reported a Pixie sighting. He checks his usual channels—the police scanner, a helpful deputy in the sheriff’s department, the other newspapers, the six or seven (laughably unsuccessful) websites dedicated to uncovering Pixie’s identity, and... nada. Not so much as a cat rescued from a tree.

At ten days, he starts to go a little stir crazy.

Like—what does it mean that he feels he _knows_ her so well... knows things about her, like that her parents are divorced, that it’s pretty much physically impossible for her to get drunk, the typical Saturday-night contents of every compartment on her utility belt, how long it took her to _make_ that belt, food, movie, _lipstick_ preferences, for God’s sake, but he doesn’t know her fucking name?

And okay, he _understands_ that she is at least apparently invulnerable, and on top of that, extremely competent, so it’s not like he thinks she’s in some kind of trouble...

Except, she _could_ be.

Maybe she’s got some Lex Luthor out there manufacturing anti-Pixie Kryptonite, and Logan just has no way of knowing because he has _no way of finding her._

He wants to do _something_ , but doesn’t have any clear idea as to what, and his friends are no help. Dick points out that it’s Superman’s job to rescue Lois Lane, not the other way around, and Duncan is too busy wasting his final days in Neptune moping about some sorority girl who won’t call him back, and Logan can’t comprehend why they fail to grasp how much of a big deal this is!

His tech guy—this drop-out named Max, who has skills and grey morals—gets him access to a few data bases, and Logan starts pulling out his hair trying to track her down.

At thirteen days, he’s actually sifting through lists of every single female enrolled at Hearst, when it occurs to him that if _he’s_ got a tech guy, _she_ might have one too. Max puts him in touch with “the only person in Southern California on that level,” who—and Logan’s willing to bet it’s not a coincidence—is also about to start her sophomore year at Hearst. That’s how he meets Mac.

 

 

 

Mac is short and blue haired, tinkering away on a laptop in Java the Hut when Logan shows up for their appointment, exactly two weeks since he’s last heard from Pixie.

For a second, he hopes desperately that _Mac_ might be Pixie, but when he sits down, gets a good look at her, he knows she’s not. The shoulders, the mouth, the voice, they’re all wrong.

“I was wondering when you and I would cross paths,” she says, tucking a strand of her electric blue bob cut behind her ear and surveying Logan with a certain amount of amusement. “We have friends in common.”

“At least one,” says Logan. “Speaking of: have you spoken to her recently?”

“Not in a few weeks, but she’s a busy girl.” Mac shrugs, doesn’t seem particularly troubled by this.

“Do you have _any_ idea how to find her?”

Mac rolls her eyes. “I don’t know her real name, if that’s what you’re asking. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I’m not trying to expose her, I’m _worried._ _No one’s_ even seen her in two weeks.”

“She can take care of herself,” Mac points out. “Being invincible has its perks.”

“But what if someone’s... I don’t know, taken her or something?” The problem is that Logan doesn’t even know what he thinks has happened to her. Maybe it _is_ nothing, maybe she’s just on a Caribbean cruise for the last few days of summer vacation, and he’s acting like a jealous ex-boyfriend when all she wants is to be left alone for a little while. For all he knows, she’s tracking down Osama Bin Laden on the other side of the globe, and he’s sitting here making this all about _him_. But he has to know.

Mac looks skeptical, but she doesn’t outright refute this possibility, and that’s something. “I’ll see if I can track her phone.”

“It’s supposed to be untraceable.”

“And who do you think made it that way?” Mac smirks and clicks away on her laptop, but her confidence fades after a minute. “That’s strange. Here, give me your phone.”

Logan hands over his cell, and Mac flips it open. She doesn’t make a call, doesn’t even press any buttons, just holds it in front of her, staring. He can see the screen changing colors, doing _something_ , as it’s reflected in her eyes, and that’s when Logan starts to realize that Mac’s not just a tech guru.

“How are you doing that?” he whispers, looking around to see if anyone else in the café has noticed. Mac winks.

“Computers like me.” Then she closes the cell and frowns, handing it back to him. “Her phone is disconnected. The battery’s—dead. Or something.”

 _Something?_ Logan doesn’t like the sound of ‘something.’ “Like—destroyed?” He’s imagining thugs smashing it into little pieces, monsters blasting it with laser eyes, and hey, after everything he’s seen, he’s not about to discount that possibility.

Mac seems reluctant to commit to anything as dramatic as all that, but she also looks like she’s starting to come around to his point of view, that at least maybe _something_ is less than fresh in the state of Neptune. “I don’t know, All I can say for sure is that it’s not active anymore. Maybe she tossed it, got a new one. Maybe she’s pissed at you for listing ‘hot tubbing’ among her hobbies.”

Logan sighs. “You don’t have anything else that might help me find her?”

Mac shakes her head, but then, after he’s thanked her and is getting up to leave, she adds: “Hey, maybe you should check with that guy keeping the peace on the south-side. I’m pretty sure they work together sometimes.”

And _fuck,_ she’s right.

“But be _careful!_ ” she calls after him.

 

 

Really, Logan doesn’t think it’s an unreasonable question:

“I’m just saying, you already have the super strength, so why are you carrying a gun? If it’s to look more imposing, you really don’t need it. The leather and the mask and the scary veiny muscles are totally sufficient.”

“ _Why_ ” asks the guy that the neighborhood kids call Weevil, “are you still speaking?”

That, Logan must admit, is _also_ a reasonable question. After sneaking, he thinks, rather effectively, into the abandoned warehouse rumored to be the PCHers’ lair and promptly getting knocked unconscious, he woke up strapped to a chair, with the leader of the south side’s men-in-tights pointing a .44 Magnum at his temple. He really should keep his mouth shut. He pinches his lips together, bows his head to demonstrate that he will cooperate, and Weevil relaxes ever so slightly. He doesn’t move the gun though.

“What the fuck are you doing here, white boy?” he demands.

Weevil’s costume isn’t as elaborate as Pixie’s. A black leather mask, with cut-outs for eyes, but no goggles. A leather jacket covers a black t-shirt, his jeans are thick, sturdy black, and he wears heavy boots. It gets the job done, though; this isn’t the kind of guy a smart person would want to start a fight with.

Weevil prods him with the nose of the gun. “Well?”

“Oh—I’m sorry, am I allowed to speak now?”

“I am going to fucking kill you...”

“Wait, no, please don’t do that,” Logan goes on quickly, “I’m sorry. Really. My name’s Logan, I’m a friend of Pixie’s.”

“I bet you are.”

Logan ignores this. “Look, I’m worried about her, I just came here to ask if you’ve talked to...?”

“Wait a minute, I know who you are.” Weevil lowers the gun, just for a second, and then re-brandishes it with renewed malice. “You’re that fucking reporter Pix hangs out with!”

It’s completely inappropriate that Logan’s first instinct is to ask: _did she mention me?_

“I’m not here to get a scoop on you, I swear!” he says instead. “I’m worried about her, okay? No one’s seen her for a couple weeks now, and I was hoping you might have some way to get in touch with her.”

Weevil hesitates. “I got a phone number,” he says, like he already knows it’s not working.

“And she’s not answering, right?” Logan asks. Weevil doesn’t agree, but he continues to not shoot Logan, which is pretty ideal. “Do you have any leads about how to find her? Her real name, even a _clue_ about her real name? Anything?”

Weevil lowers the gun, sighs. “She goes to the college,” he says, jerking his head in a nebulous direction, representative of Hearst.

“Well I know _that_ ,” says Logan, rolling his eyes, and Weevil holds up his gun—doesn’t aim it at Logan again, but just kind of waves it around as a reminder that the weapon exists. “Sorry," Logan apologizes, "Anything else?”

“Nah, man.” He shakes his head. “I was thinking something was off with her. Coulda used her help a couple of day ago, but she didn’t show. I know she’s close with her old man, but I don’t got any names.”

“Nothing?”

“Look, if someone else had come around looking for her, I’d have sent ‘em to _you._ ”

 

 

At fifteen days, Logan realizes there have been no police cruisers outside his apartment in quite some time.

 

 

Day seventeen is the day before classes start again. Logan holds out hope that the semester will begin, and Pixie will come back—saving babies from burning buildings, doing her thing again, even if she _is_ pissed at him for the hot-tubbing joke.

This hope does not prevent him from scanning through his list of Hearst students, cross-referencing names with info collected from a P.I. database that Mac got him into. It’s getting late, after eleven, and Logan has an early Psych class, but he can’t motivate himself to _stop_ searching.

Pixie is somewhere between eighteen and twenty four, which eliminates very few names. Divorced parents, which gets him down into the triple digits, and he’s about to start stalking Facebooks, when a tapping sound on his window scares the bejeezus out of him. All the more so because he lives on the fifth floor.

He’s pretty much made up his mind that it’s a bird, but he goes to check it out anyway, in the event that some nice cat burglar needs to be let in. Then, when he opens the curtains and peers through the glass, she’s standing on his balcony.

He opens the sliding glass doors at once, and yes, it really is her. In black as always. Leaning against the banister, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle, red lipstick spread perfectly over her lips, and Logan struggles to navigate the competing impulses to shout at her and to kiss her.

“Hi,” he says, oh-so-intelligently, as he steps out onto the balcony. She straightens up immediately, her shoulders pulling up in this awkward shrug. She brings her hands behind her back to rest on her ass, like if she were wearing jeans, she’d be tucking them into her back pockets. “I was worried about you...” he says (putting it very mildly), “You didn’t answer your phone.”

“Yeah, I was out of town and my phone broke,” she says. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I have a new number.” She pulls a scrap of lined notepaper from her glove, ten new digits scribbled across it, and hands that to Logan. He accepts it, also awkward, and he can’t figure out why this whole thing is so damn uncomfortable. She’s never seemed so—nervous in front of him. “I heard you met Mac,” she adds, her lips curling up a little, and he nods, folds the paper into the pocket of his jeans.

 _She visited Mac before she visited me_ — _oh, so what? She’s still visiting, ya baby._

He’s pretty sure Pixie can’t read minds, but she does a solid job tracking him anyway. Says: “I had to stop by and see her to set up the new phone.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I met her. She’s cool. Um—do you want to come inside?” He gestures at his apartment, and she shakes her head.

“I should go soon. I just—Mac mentioned you were concerned, so I thought I’d...” she shrugs again, failing at nonchalance, “You know... show you I’m fine.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks. I guess I can call off the dogs, then.”

She nods. Smiles. “Yeah.”

“Just—I mean, you could’ve texted me. So I didn’t think something was wrong.”

“I told you, my phone broke.” She takes a step to her right, away from Logan.

“Yeah, but before you left, I mean...”

“It was... a surprise.”

“What—so you like, went on vacation?”

“Yeah.” She folds her arms, nods her head, and Logan wishes she would take off that damn mask so he could see if she’s meeting his eyes. “Vacation with my dad. R&R before the semester, that type of thing.”

“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t say something...”

“Look, can you just drop it?” she asks, impatient. “I’m sorry you got worried, but that’s stupid, okay? I’m—I’m literally indestructible, I don’t know what you thought could’ve happened, but it didn’t, I’m _fine_ , so just let it be.”

 _Stupid_. Yeah, completely stupid. Stupid Logan, thinking...

He should keep his mouth shut, because he’s hurt and he’s got no right to be but he is, and that’s only going to goad him into a fight—

“Well, it’s pretty fucking rude that you couldn’t take five seconds out of your life to type out a text so I knew you weren’t dead or something.”

“Well I’m _sorry_ , Logan,” she snaps back, “But I was a little busy, y’know, and it’s not like you’re... it’s not like I...”

“It’s not like you owe me anything?” he finishes for her.

She jerks her head once.

That fucking stings. The relief that she’s okay is ebbing away, and replacing it is a sense of foolishness. _It’s not like I’m her boyfriend,_ is what she meant _._ Maybe not even really her friend. He doesn’t even know her fucking name. He’s spent the last two weeks freaking out about her, and he didn’t even—he didn’t even merit a blip on her radar.

He’s like Mac and Weevil—intersecting threads in this secondary life that she picks up and drops from time to time. Except Mac and Weevil were at least smart enough to realize how they placed in her life. They got that she might vanish, do her own thing, and they were smart enough to know that she didn’t expect, didn’t _want_ , them to think of it as any of their business.

And that hurts—really fucking hurts—and Logan’s gearing up to say something generally dickish, as he is wont to do in such situations, probably tagging on something dramatic that he’ll immediately regret, like tearing up her phone number and slamming the sliding door. He’s all ready to do it, too, when he notices that she’s shaking.

She hasn’t moved, still stands at an angle to him, still has her arms folded, except now he thinks it’s more like she’s clutching at her sides. Her whole body trembles, a slight but visible tremor, and her lips are pressed tightly together as if she’s holding in a scream.

“You’re lying,” he realizes suddenly.

“I’m not...” she starts to say, but then stops herself. He waits, just waits for her to make up her mind. She begins to pace from the edge of the balcony to the glass doors; it’s only maybe three steps, but she does it anyway, swiping at the side of her mask, as though she’s used to brushing hair away from her face there, “I didn’t—I didn’t go on vacation. I was working. I got into some trouble...” She touches her forehead with the tips of her fingers, still pacing: “I drowned.”

 _Fuck._ Logan takes a step closer, heart in his throat. “Oh my God...”

But she’s started now, so she keeps going, very quickly and directed at the floor: “They tied me up and I was—I was in this box, and it was weighted down so I’d sink to the bottom of the ocean, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t get free, so I drowned. But then, because of how I am, I came back when I was still—still tied up under water, and I still couldn’t get free, so I—my lungs would fill up with water again and then—but I’d just keep coming back. Over and over and over.” She swallows thickly. “It was days.”

Logan thinks he’s going to be sick. He _knows_ he’s going to be sick if he spends another second on the other side of this damn balcony, so he strides up to her and pulls her as close as he possibly can—as much for himself as for her, because he’s selfish, but he _needs_ to be holding her right now. She loops her arms around his middle, though, holds him close, forehead to his chest. She keeps speaking, low and watery: “It hurt so bad. I was so tired and hungry and I—I couldn’t think or see. It was so dark and cold, and I just...” She cries softly against his chest, and he clutches her so close, one arm around her shoulders, the other splayed against the back of her head, holding her to him. Her thick, looser hood has fallen away, so when he presses his lips to the top of her head, he feels the way her mask shifts with her hair underneath. She is warm and solid and safe and he wishes he knew what to say, something better than the dozens of whispered _I’m so sorrys._ He wants to know how she escaped, has she seen a doctor, what does her dad say... he has so many questions but he doesn’t know where to begin, doesn’t have the faintest idea what the protocol is for this.

"Who did that to you?” he asks after some time, when she’s stilled in his arms and her breathing has evened out.

She shakes her head and mutters “No” into his shirt.

Logan pulls back so he can look at her face, and that’s annoying, because all he can see is his stupid reflection in her goggles. “Who is it? You have to—look, I can’t just...”

“You’re not getting involved in this,” she says firmly, but she doesn’t let go of him.

“Was it Lamb?”

“W-what?”

He tells her about the cop car that stopped showing up around the same time she did. “Actually, we should probably go inside,” he realizes, glancing out at the street. It’s quiet for now, but who knows how long that’ll last?

She shakes her head. “They don’t know I’m back yet. Lamb’s connected to it,” she admits, “but he’s not pulling the strings.”

 _Goodman._ Logan would put money on it.

“Do they know who you are?” He interprets the fact that she hasn’t yet pushed him off the balcony as permission to brush his thumb along her jaw. “Your real name?”

She shakes her head again. “One of the flunkies saw my face, but they didn’t know me. They were kind of in a hurry to—y’know.” Logan winces. “I’m serious about staying out of this,” she goes on, all stern, “I’m going to make them pay and _soon_ , but I don’t want you meddling and messing things up in the meantime.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Logan.”

“I’m just saying, I could help you...”

“ _You_ don’t come back once _you_ drown,” she interrupts. Logan fails to see the relevance.

“How do you know? You’ve never asked.”

“I...” She stops, realizes he’s teasing her, and smiles. Her grip on his shirt relaxes, and she goes on in a softer voice: “You were looking for me.”

He stares at her lips, because those are the part of her face that he can actually see. “Mhm.”

“You were worried about me...”

“Yeah.” There’s a long, charged moment of silence. Then Logan breaks it up with: “I met your friend Weevil, by the way. Fun guy.”

“Oh?” She smirks. “Did you make a new buddy?”

“Uh-huh, we’re gonna start our own bowling team.”

A part of Logan—a very small part of him—will always regret that those are the last words out of his mouth just before she grabs his face and kisses him. Big-picture-wise, it’s a small regret, really shouldn’t even register when compared to all the other things he has to look back on, but he would have preferred something a _little_ more romantic. He is a _writer_ , after all, there ought to have been some sort of speech involved.

None of these thoughts makes it through his brain until much later, though, because when she kisses him, a fuse shorts and all available resources are diverted to more pressing matters.

She parts her lips for him, draws him in deeper and deeper, and then he’s lost in how beyond incredible she tastes, how her body feels pressed up against his, how fucking overjoyed he is that she’s here, safe. She’s here and she’s healthy and maybe not whole, but she’s okay, and she _bites_ , and he’s glad, so grateful, for all of it. Probably he loves her, and there are people out there who hurt her, _scared her,_ and the entire universe can be reduced to the fact that someone made her suffer and he might kill them if he ever gets the chance, but now all he can do is kiss her like it means something. Make her feel how much he cares, because she is so, so important, she has to know.

He grips her waist, presses hard against her mouth, and she gasps when he takes her bottom lip between his teeth. It’s everything he can do not to tear off that stupid mask so he can kiss her whole face, her neck, run his hands through her hair. He doesn’t, and she deepens the kiss, taking long, hungry drags from his mouth just as he does from hers.

Breaking apart is a slow, reluctant process, like they can’t quite work themselves up to stopping.

Just after she drops back to the flats of her feet, hands falling across his chest and to her sides, she surges up and presses one last faint kiss on the side of his mouth. They’re both out of breath, but she’s smiling up at him. He skims his fingers along her jaw, then her lips.

“I’m probably wearing more of this than you are,” he says, grazing over the smudged lipstick.

“It’s a nice color for you.”

He’s transfixed by her at this proximity. She smells amazing, in a way he’d never noticed before, and the sound of her soft, shallow breaths does something to his head.

Then, unbidden, the image of her bound and submerged in water, gasping for air, fills his mind. _I drowned_. God, he wants to hold onto her and never let go, but he doubts she’d let him, so he settles for brushing his knuckles along her cheekbone. She’s so soft and warm and badass and wonderful.

“Can I...?” he trails off, not really sure what he’s asking her permission for, until his fingers glance along the edge of her mask. Her breath hitches, her lips slightly parted, and Logan prays that she’ll say _yes_. He could’ve lost her; he _needs_ her.

But she shakes her head. “I—I can’t,” is all she offers by way of explanation, and Logan’s heart sinks in disappointment. “I have to go,” she continues, taking a step back. “I can’t stay out too long. My dad’s been worried sick about me since I got back. I had a doctor look at me—I just told her I _almost_ drowned, obviously, and I’m fine now, but... Y’know. _Dads_.” She shrugs.

He _doesn’t_ know, considering his experience with doctors and dads usually involved one covering up the temper tantrums of the other. No point in bringing _that_ up, though. “There isn’t any permanent damage?” he asks uncertainly.

“I don’t think so. I was sick for a few days—but... all better now.” She smiles, but it’s unconvincing.

“You start classes tomorrow?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who’re you taking?”

“Nice try.”

Logan smirks. He watches as she climbs over the railing, lowers her body and drops down onto the balcony of his downstairs neighbor’s apartment. She does it again and again, and when she reaches the ground, she pauses on the sidewalk. She’s a little blue in the security lights around his building. Her face outside the mask has a strange, ethereal glow when she turns up toward him.

He doesn’t wave this time, just leans over the banister and watches her walk off.

 

 

 

Everything changes and nothing does.

 

 

“First of all, if this proves _anything_ , it’s that I _can’t_ tell you my name.”

“How on God’s green earth did you arrive at that stunning display of logical drivel?”

“Logan, he had uniformed deputies staking out your apartment.”

“C’mon, they’re not gonna put a hit out on _me_.”

“Why? Because your dad is famous?”

“No, because they’re all huge Tiberius Fairchild fans.”

“I really shouldn’t have to explain this to you. It’s superhero 101, and I _know_ you’ve seen Spiderman.”

“Does that make me Mary-Jane?”

“I was thinking Aunt May.”

 

 

Except Logan is pretty sure that he’s Mary-Jane, because when a benched wide receiver plants a bomb under the bleachers of Hearst stadium during the first football game of the season, and Pixie shows up and enlists his help to save the day, they end up making out several more times. _After_ they ditch the explosives, that is. Well—mostly after. A little bit before, too. Not like, negligent amounts, but... well, Logan’s really glad the stadium didn’t blow up, cause he’d feel super guilty if they’d dropped the ball on that one. So to speak.

But it’s really difficult to regret the fact that he got to experience the truly unparalleled pleasure of pressing her up against the concrete wall of the tunnel behind the locker rooms and kissing her senseless.

 

 

Woody Goodman goes down just before Halloween.

Pixie “has nothing to do with it,” which is to say that she has everything to do with it, but no one else seems to realize that. She says it’s because Goodman’s exposure as a child rapist is so jarring, and his conviction uncertain enough without a masked vigilante leaving her fingerprints all over the case. Instead, the by-line goes to Lucky Dohanic, two victims from Logan’s class at Neptune High, his source at the sheriff’s department, and some ex-cop-turned-P.I. with offices downtown.

Mostly, Logan hopes that means no one has motive to throw _the Pixie_ over the side of a boat again.

 

 

 

“You changed your lipstick.”

“Red is so last year.”

“So what’s the new color?”

“It’s called ‘Blackmail.’”

 

 

 

He gets her a pocket knife for Christmas, personalized with an engraving of a tiny pair of wings. Because: Pixie, get it, _ha ha._ Anyway, she seems to like it, and it attaches to her belt.

She doesn’t admit to getting him anything for Christmas, but on the twenty-third, a perfectly wrapped box containing an old-fashioned typewriter shows up outside his apartment door. Curiously enough, the security feeds in his building are down for half an hour that same afternoon.

  

 

 

Otherwise, she doesn’t often come to his apartment, though she does put in an appearance in January. This cute History major has been claiming to be the Pixie, and Logan’s just exposed her as a fraud, so the real Pixie stops by to express her gratitude.

“You didn’t believe her even for a second?” she asks, between tastes of his lips.

“Nope.”

“You didn’t even think it was _possible_ she was me? Even when she was hitting on you?” She nips at his chin, and god, is she cute when she’s jealous.

“Nuh-uh.”

“But how did you know?”

“I could just tell.”

“Because her boobs are bigger?”

“Because she wasn’t ninety-seven percent annoying.”

“Jackass,” she says, but her grin is wide and totally self-satisfied.

 

 

 

He doesn’t track her down. He thinks he _could_ find out her real identity if he tried. He could get her fingerprints or DNA easily enough and maybe convince the cooperative Deputy D’Amato to see if they match anyone in the system. He could plant a bug or a tracking device on her.

But she doesn’t _want_ him to know. For whatever stupid reason, she wants to keep her secret, at least for now. _Hopefully_ just for now. Logan doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if he thought he’d _never_ meet Pixie un-Pixie’d, but he completely assumes that one day in the not too distant future, she’ll tell him her name. And in the meantime, secrets are kind of hot too.

 

 

 

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in April when Logan meets _Ronnie_ in the library.

He takes her number but he doesn’t call her, because even though she weirdly reminded him of his superhero friend-with-some-benefits, he’s entirely sure that if Pixie wanted to stop him from finding out her real identity, she wouldn’t agree to go on a fucking date with him.

He _does_ call Pixie two nights later, ostensibly to get a comment on the stories of her involvement in a pretty big fight outside the Pi-Sig house, but the conversation kind of drifts. Usually that means she’s not working, or that she’s on a long, boring stake-out.

So they’re not really discussing anything particular, she’s just trash-talking the Pi-Sigs, and Logan has to know: “What would you do if I met you during the daytime?”

He’s asked it before, of course, but not for a while. She’s silent on the line. “Why?” she asks eventually.

“Well, would you acknowledge me? Or try to trick me so I wouldn’t know it’s you?”

“There are thousands of students on campus, Logan, the likelihood that you’ll just run into me...”

“You’re not answering my question,” he interrupts, and she sighs.

“I don’t know.”

“Have you seen me?”

“I—yes.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere. Or, I mean—just random places. Walking. Things like that.”

“A lot?”

“No, not really. A couple times.”

Logan frowns. “It’s not fair,” he says, and he expects her to argue, but she doesn’t.

All she says is: “I know.”

 

* * *

 

The day Logan approaches her in the library is, otherwise, a pretty typical Wednesday for Veronica Mars.

She climbs back through the window of her hard-won single in the Theta Beta house by five a.m., just in time for Chelsea to wake up everyone with her noisy attempts to navigate the bathroom before early-morning yoga.

Veronica sleeps until nine, is dressed and showered by ten, and seated for her Modern Poetry lecture by ten-thirty. She listens diligently to the first half, takes notes, and when Professor Danvers opens the floor up to questions, she tunes out to finish her Criminal Psychology reading.

She takes a ten minute lunch in the Student Union, is in her desk before Conway begins lecture at five past noon. There’s a reading quiz, but that’s cake.

After Psych, she’s got half an hour until her shift in the library, and she spends that time working. She huddles herself away in a quiet corner of campus, sifting through lists of Fitzpatrick henchmen, cross-referencing their names with timetables and schedules and phone records—the results of months of surveillance. At ten minutes to two, she packs her things up into her pretty white eyelet satchel bag and hurries along to the main stacks, just in time to relieve a grouchy Craig from the Help desk.

Craig is not Veronica’s favorite person on the planet. He’d certainly been attentive and helpful when she first started working here the year before, but when Veronica (politely!) declined his request for a date, he soured. Now he’s just super condescending, calls her _Honey_ to her face and “a stuck up princess” behind her back. If Veronica didn’t have actual problems to deal with, this might bother her a little more. Fact is, she’s leading not one, but _two_ pretty complicated, tightly scheduled lives. She doesn’t have time for toads like Craig.

He’s packing up his stuff, spiraling into a full rant about how they’re rearranging the Classics section, so don’t forget to point anyone looking for Homer toward the basement, and Veronica’s not listening at all, just idling while she waits for Craig to vacate the chair. As she stands, tapping the toe of her ivory ballet flat, her eyes drift across the main hall. And there he is.

Not even twenty feet away from her, at a table with his laptop, books and papers scattered around him. He’s hunched over, one palm holding up his forehead, the other rubbing at his chin while he squints at his screen.

Logan.

Veronica swallows, tries to look away, tries to look neutral, tries to act like she doesn’t know him. Imagines what she would do, how she would stand, react, feel, if he were just a complete stranger. Which, in a way, he is.

He looks different somehow—possibly due to her lack of goggles, but also because he’s so still, so _calm._ Well, not relative to normal people; he’s still fidgety as all hell, and his foot is tapping rapid fire on the floor, so the girl at the next study table is glaring viciously at him... but compared to the usual Logan Echolls show, he’s positively stoic.

Maybe he won’t see her.

(The thought should be hopeful but is mostly anxious.)

Maybe he’ll just continue his work and never even look in her direction.

And if he does look at her, maybe he won’t notice that she is the same height and general shape as the Pixie. Maybe it won’t even cross his mind.

She has seen him before, of course. Probably a dozen times around campus in the last year and a half, but they’ve never interacted. She always avoids it. At the Kappa Gamma mixer last spring, she turned and walked in the other direction when she saw him coming through the door. At the basketball game against Long Beach in January, she realized in the first quarter that he was sitting two rows in front of her and spent the remainder of the game half terrified, half desperate for him to turn around. He didn’t. And she didn’t see any of Wallace’s three-pointers.

Then there were other, lesser close-calls. Ducking behind lanyard stands in the bookstore, waiting in the bathroom for him to get his coffee and leave Java the Hut, walking in-step with taller, larger students so he wouldn’t spot her when their paths cross in the quad.

But she’s never been this close for a sustained period of time (without her mask), and it’s scary in the same way a rollercoaster is.

Craig finally vacates the attendant’s seat; Veronica takes it and mumbles something polite as he leaves. She settles in, pulling out her well-loved copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ , because she feels like the River Styx employee roster would be a dead giveaway. Then she just tries to act _normal_.

She pretends to be looking at her computer monitor and notices him noticing her.

At first it’s the way guys usually notice her. Cute-blonde-in-a-dress kind of noticing. Then it’s the way you notice someone you went to middle school with, whose name you can’t quite remember. Then it’s the way you notice your best friend after they’ve been lost in a crowd.

Veronica switches back to her book, tries very hard to concentrate on the words on the page, but it’s no use.

Normal, normal, normal, just be _normal_.

Then he’s getting to his feet and approaching her.

 _He’s found her_.

She regulates her breathing, running through everything she’s ever known about poker faces, and juggling competing mantras of _deny, deny, deny_ and _finally, finally, finally._

“Thank God,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He’s standing right over her. Her heart is pounding so loudly, she’s surprised he can’t _hear_ it, but damn it all, she will not be undone so easily. She looks up, blinks innocently at him, and he’s so... so Logan, with his hair and that scarlet Henley and his canvas messenger bag...

“Me?” is all she can get out. Breathy and stupid, not her finest work.

“Sure. You help people, right?” He teases her with the sign, and Veronica has to get her shit together right this instant or he is going to see right through her.

She goes full perky: “That’s what the sign says. Are you lost amongst the mighty tomes of our hallowed halls? What can I help you find?”

There, that’s better. It’s a fair representation of Ronnie as she is with most of her sisters at Theta Beta, with Craig, with the kids in her statistics study group, but it’s still too close to the truth, she thinks, for Logan. _Too much irony, clean it up_ , _dumb it down. Small words, fewer abstracts._

“Biographies,” he says. “Emma Orczy.”

 _The Scarlet Pimpernel._ Subtle, Logan. She wants to roll her eyes, but she thinks he’d probably notice. “Is that the author or the subject?” she asks, and _ding, ding, ten points to the blonde behind the desk:_ she’s passed his second test. No quip, no indication that she’s caught his reference. Pixie would have started a whole _bit_ around that, but not Ronnie. Ronnie is just cheery and helpful and definitely not a cover for anyone’s crime-fighting alter ego.

“Subject,” he says.

 She brings up the library’s database and asks: “Did you have a particular biography in mind?”

“No, anything will do. English essay. Just trying to grab some quotes.”

“Oh, I see.” It’s quiet, and she thinks that if they were strangers, if she wasn’t kind of crazy about this guy, she would probably make polite conversation with him. And it’s not just an excuse to talk to him, honest, she really thinks that’s the best course of action: “Are you an English major? I only ask ‘cause my Big is an English major.” She gestures to the letters on her necklace, and that part is true, Marjorie _is_ an English major; he can fact check her if he likes.

“Journalism,” Logan says, and he’s fucking _studying_ her. Her whole body feels hot under his scrutiny, and she wants to run away and she wants to tell him it’s _her_ and she wants to beat him in this weird cat-and-mouse thing. Obviously, there are a few conflicts. “...a lot of English requirements,” he’s saying, irrelevant, “I write for the _Hearst Chronicle_.”

He’s trying to bait her. She will not be baited. “Oh? That’s nice.” She purses her lips and pretends to study her computer screen. When she’s got herself under control, she smiles up at Logan again and tells him that she knows where he can find a book. She writes out the ISSNs on a piece of notepaper, careful to modify her handwriting, and then hands it over, directing him upstairs.

Logan examines the note and kind of frowns, then looks back up at her. No match here.

She’s pretty sure she has him fooled, but the pride of victory is late to show up.

Then he smirks, turns on Logan-the-performer, and says: “Thank-you. You’ve been _very_ helpful. Y’know if the librarians at Neptune Public Library had been as nice as you, I’d have read a lot more as a child.”

She gives some vague response, but doesn’t really register the words, because _he’s hitting on her._ He is _flirting_ with her, dammit, and even though that has been their default mode basically since they met, Veronica has no idea how to respond. She messes around with her book to buy herself some time.

She could do _sweet_ : shyly responsive but politely detached. She could shut him down, put an end to this interaction as quickly as possible. Blush and lie: _sorry, I have a boyfriend_. Fake an aneurysm.

“Nah, I bought and swindled my way into college,” he’s saying, smarmy and annoying, and she’d like to say, _Seems like a boring use of wealth and corruption_ , but instead makes some vaguely disapproving sound and doesn’t retort.

He taps the counter like he’s waiting for more, waiting for _some_ clue, and he’ll just have to keep waiting, because she is giving nothing up. She’s adjusting to the character, could probably withstand a dozen more attempts to banter. “Well, thanks for the help...”

“Ronnie,” she supplies when prompted, and she doesn’t like that he has no reaction. Besides, she has never cared for the nickname, and when she’s imagined him saying her name (which is obviously not something she’s imagined, because that would make her a crazy person), she’s always heard it as her full name. “Well—Veronica. Ronnie for short.” She cutes it up, and Logan hesitates, like he’s seen or heard something familiar. She hopes—insanely—that he likes her name, and she gives him an expectant nod, to ask him for his.

“Oh. Uh—Logan. Logan Echolls.” They shake hands. “Ronnie, huh?” he goes on. “I was expecting _Marian._ ”

_Yeah, just see what happens if you try and chase me around this desk._

“Do I... look like a Marian?”

“Madame Librarian?” he tries.

 _And you’re trouble with a capital “T” that rhymes with “E” that stands for Echolls,_ she doesn’t say. All she says is, “What?”

“It’s...” He shakes his head, dispelling an urge, and Veronica can see his hope fade. “Never mind. Nice to meet you, Ronnie.”

He doesn’t sound like it was particularly nice to meet her, though, and as much as Veronica knows that she just passed test number three, she feels more like she failed.

“Nice to meet you, Logan.” That’s another lie. It was _not_ nice to meet him, it was awful to meet him. Meeting him fully sucked, is what it did. She scowls down at her book while he walks away. He’s _walking away_. This boy who jumped off a roof to get ten more seconds of conversation with her, is just walking away like there’s nothing here to see. She wants to fucking cry.

“Hey.”

He’s coming back, and Veronica stamps down all of her urges to get up and shout _it’s me it’s me it’s me_ , instead sending him her blandest smile.

He sounds nervous: “Hey, I was—and feel free to say ‘no,’ obviously, but I was wondering if you’d want to go out sometime?”

“Me?” she asks idiotically, partially because she’s not completely sure and partially to fill time. Her brain and heart are simultaneously racing, and she doesn’t know what to do, _fuck_. He nods, _yes I am speaking to you, Only Person in the Vicinity—_ except if he were talking to her as Pixie, he would’ve said that part out loud, and she would’ve called him a dick.

What is her play here? It’s clearly a trap: he suspects her, and he figures if she goes out with him, he’ll have plenty of time to find out for sure. So obviously, accepting would be a huge, _terrible_ mistake, it would practically be giving herself up. She stammers: “Well... I...” But, on the other hand, _Logan is asking her out on a date_ , and he proposes marriage at least once a month, and they kiss sometimes, and he is a _damn_ good kisser, but this is different, because he’s asking _Veronica_ , and he has a hope that she might say _yes_. It’s not just a game. “I—I guess,” she says. “Why not?”

He takes her number, and his smile might look genuine if she didn’t know him so well. As it is, she can see that he is downright pained. He doesn’t even say _thank-you_ or _I’ll call_ , just gives her that awful, knife-in-my-back smile and heads upstairs.

He must take the elevator and the other exit out, because he doesn’t pass by her desk again.

 

 

She pretty much manages to wait until she’s back in her room at the Theta Beta house to completely deteriorate into the hot mess of nerves that she is. She collapses onto her bed and screams into her pillow for about thirty seconds.

Logan met her today. He found her.

And he didn’t like her.

And it’s so absurd that she’s upset about this, because she did her damnedest to make sure he didn’t like her. She tried to kill any chemistry between them, acted detached, disinterested, didn’t immediately drag him over the desk and start making out.

But he still asked her out, he still _knew_ her, and that fact warms Veronica all over. She emerges from her pillow and rolls onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. He recognized her, and he might not have liked the Ronnie-lite persona she practically smothered him in, but he still held out some hope that it was _her_. He still wanted her number.

What she’s having trouble working out is why she gave it to him. She could’ve turned him down with a believable excuse, but why did she agree to go out with him?

Well, obviously because she _wants_ to go out with him. She wants Logan to find her, she wants him to call her _Veronica,_ wants to sleep with him, wants to go on dates with him, wants him to meet her ZTB sisters, Wallace, her dad. She knows she’s not supposed to want all that, and she has really tried to fight off the instincts that say _fuck everything_ , _go home with the hot boy_ , because it’s not safe for Logan. Not safe for _her_ either, God knows. But he _found_ her, dammit, in a library of all places, and—God, she wants to go on a date with him. She wants him to know that he would _like_ her, if he knew her all the way.

She sits up on her bed, glares out at her legs stretched over her pretty floral comforter.

So Logan didn’t like her. It’s not as if this was her last chance. He’ll call, and they’ll go out, probably somewhere he thinks will get a reaction out of her, and she won’t be so aloof. She’ll be more like herself, and she might not have cat suits and combat boots, but he could still like her. Anyway, what’s done is done. She can worry about everything else when he calls.

 

 

He doesn’t call the first day, which is pretty standard guy protocol. Well, according to Gretchen, a junior Communications major in the house, and probably the world’s greatest living expert on social dynamics of the dating culture of twenty-first century youth. Veronica almost wishes she could tell Gretchen the whole situation, because she might have some valuable insights. If there’s anyone who would know about the social guidelines of flirtation with a guy who has a crush on your secret identity, it would be Gretchen.

He doesn’t call the second day either, and it’s still within the mythical Three Day Grace Period, so Veronica tries not to feel disappointed about it.

Except he _does_ call the Pixie phone that night, after she gets home from dinner with her dad and just as she’s settling in to work on her Statistics homework. 

“What would you do if I met you during the daytime?” he asks at one point, and fuck, if she had any doubts that he knows who she is, they’re pretty small now.

“Why?” she asks, because she wants him to admit it.

“Well, would you acknowledge me? Or try to trick me so I wouldn’t know it’s you?”

 _What, like I’m just gonna give you the answers?_ If he asked her straight up whether or not she’s the girl from the library, she doesn’t think she’d mind, but this dancing around the subject is frustrating. She doesn’t know how to engage. “There are thousands of students on campus, Logan, the likelihood that you’ll just run into me...”

“You’re not answering my question,” he interrupts, and she sighs.

“I don’t know.”

“Have you seen me?”

 He knows. _He knows he knows he knows._ “I—yes.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere. Or, I mean—just random places. Walking. Things like that.”

“A lot?”

“No, not really. A couple times.”

“It’s not fair.”

None of it is.

“I know.”

 

 

 

He doesn’t call on the third day.

Or the fourth.

He texts the Pixie phone that the guy she was trailing showed up at some fancy club in the 09, but she doesn’t even respond _thank-you_ because Logan Echolls can just go fuck himself.

 

 

 

On day five, Veronica is of the opinion that the Logan situation really can’t get any worse. Holding such opinions, she soon realizes, is a poor idea and a prime example of tempting fate.

She has an afternoon shift at the library, but she’s working the front desk this time, checking books out and handling returns. She’s just managed to stack the heap of research texts that some overworked grad student dumped on her, and the pile is really enormous, so she doesn’t even have the benefit of noticing Logan first. One minute, she’s wondering why in hell anyone would need a complete history of waste management in eighteenth century England, and the next she’s looking up into a pair of irritatingly familiar brown eyes. Her poker face isn’t nearly as strong this time.

She just stares for ten seconds, and at least Logan has the decency to look uncomfortable too.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she says back. 

He’s here to confront her. To call her out for trying to trick him. To bitch at her for lying. To make fun of her sweater set. To—

Return his fucking library book.

He gestures with the text she directed him to last week and places it on the desk between them. “Don’t wanna get a late fee,” he says, and he’s not making eye contact.

“You have a month,” she says, not quite managing _polite,_ although she keeps most of the _you are the devil, go die_ out of her tone. “With the book. You can keep it for a month.”

“It’s all right. Got what I needed for the essay.”

“Was it helpful?” she asks, navigating the book around the larger stack at her elbow and sliding it under the scanner.

“Yeah, thanks. So, you—uh, work the front desk too?”

“We move around,” she says, stilted.

_He didn’t realize she would be here. He’s not here to see her at all. He’s avoiding her._

Veronica recognizes the particular brand of awkward that Logan is rocking this afternoon. It’s the same way she gets whenever she runs into that deejay she went on two dates with and ended up asking to “just be friends” (he gamely agreed, and then never spoke to her again). Logan’s not nervous because he doesn’t know how to act around her, he’s uncomfortable because she’s a random girl he didn’t call. Or because she’s a girl he thought he had a crush on who didn’t live up to the hype.

Either option is the worst.

She shows great self-restraint and does _not_ hurl the stupid book at his head, but rather places it on the cart behind her and then smiles, very fake, at him. “Anything else?”

“Uh, nope. Thanks.” He taps the desk once. “Good seeing you.”

Then he leaves.

The lack of thunder bolts showering down on his head as he goes is further evidence against the existence of a benevolent deity.

 

 

Veronica would like to go home, curl up in a ball, and die, but since that’s never really been an effective coping method, and since drowning, three shootings, a dozen stabbings, countless broken bones, and at least one poisoning haven’t been effective, she doesn’t think an unrequited crush will actually kill her. So, she goes out and stops a mugging and calls in a tip about a beige sedan parked halfway in a red zone.

She’s not just being a stickler: the owner runs a nice little pharmaceutical operation out of that car, and he likes to leave pretty purple bruises on his girlfriend’s face.

She feels a little better at the end of the night.

 

 

“You seem down,” says Marjorie, joining Veronica on the Theta Beta’s living room couch the next evening.

Veronica has been tutoring one of the other sisters, Agnes, in English Lit on Tuesday nights, and tonight’s tutoring session has morphed into white wine and a spirited _Real Housewives_ viewing. It won’t help Agnes’s grades, but the bonding is nice. Half a dozen sisters have joined in, and Frida made popcorn.

Veronica hadn’t expected to care for the Theta Betas, even as she strapped on her sunniest espadrilles and threw herself into last year’s rush. The sorority was supposed to serve as her cover, not to be something she actually cared about. And there are big parts that she _doesn’t_ care about, though the access that the Greek community provides has certainly benefited her _Pixie_ activities at times. But Veronica genuinely likes many of the other girls in the house, and they (mostly) all have her back—a facet of this existence that she had never even considered before. Agnes’s reading comprehension may be total shit, but she’s an amazing tennis player, and she always makes sure to reserve a cupcake for Veronica when she’s baking.

Marjorie is Veronica’s “Big Sister” and her best friend in the house. She’s a senior, on the pre-Law track, and one of those few genuinely _kind_ people. There are ways in which Veronica thinks Marjorie can see right through her sometimes—not that she’s cottoned on about how Veronica spends her nights, but like she knows which parts of Veronica’s _sweet girl_ persona are an act, and she doesn’t judge.

It is a little frustrating, though, when Marjorie can just flop herself down on the couch and make an admittedly accurate observation about Veronica’s mood.

“You seem down,” Marjorie says, tucking her sock-clad toes underneath her body. The others are reasonably distracted by the popcorn and the _Housewives,_ and Marjorie speaks softly, so at least Veronica’s feelings aren’t on the table for the entire house to examine.

“I’m okay,” she says, trying to smile.

“The boy didn’t call?” asks Marjorie, then explains: “Gretchen told me.”

Veronica rolls her eyes, but she’d known that was a risk (or rather, a certainty) when discussing anything with Gretchen. She’d kept the details to a minimum, fudged some of the facts, and acted as if the whole business didn’t bother her at all, but of course Marjorie would know better. “He didn’t,” she admits. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Marjorie frowns deeply, blue eyes studying her “little sister” in a way that always makes Veronica uncomfortable. “I’ve never seen you down about a boy before,” she points out. Which is very true. Veronica’s usual type is _Strong Résumé, Weak Interview_ , and that’s _one_ way to avoid getting too attached. “You really like him?”

Veronica shakes her head. “I just have a bruised ego,” she says. “It’s not a big deal, honestly.”

“Bruised ego? You? Ronnie, you’re the smartest, most beautiful woman I know,” she says, and Veronica blushes. Only Marjorie can get away with saying crap like that, because she’s so damn sincere. “If any guy doesn’t like _you_ , he’s obviously an idiot.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Veronica shrugs, tries to play it off. “I’ll be all right, though. You know me, _unsinkable Veronica Mars._ ”

 _Ugh—still too soon for jokes like that._ Her stomach churns a little, and she turns her eyes to the television in a fairly successful attempt to distract from the memories her quip brings to the surface.

“And who knows?” Marjorie goes on, because she just can’t help being ridiculously optimistic. “Maybe he’s just—forgetful. Maybe he’ll call.”

Veronica snorts. “God help him if he does.”

 

 

She rejects Logan’s first call (to the Pixie number) on Wednesday night, because she is still annoyed with him. She answers his second call, because it’s unusual for him to call twice consecutively and she thinks something might be wrong.

When she answers, however, Logan sounds cheerful enough: “Hey, how are you?”

“What do you need?”

“Why? Are you busy?”

Truth be told: a little. She’s at the gym tonight. Not the one for general student use, although that’s fine and well for the elliptical or bicep curls. When she really wants to work out, though, really wants to train, she’s wary of doing so in public. Logan isn’t the only one who suspects that the Pixie is enrolled at Hearst, and there are entire groups of people— _Internet Folk,_ Logan calls them—that exert a lot of energy trying to track her down. So Wallace got her a key to the basketball team’s private weight room, and if she only shows up after hours, she can train without fear of detection. What she really enjoys is the punching bag. Especially in the last week or so.

“Yes, very,” she says, strolling over to the mirrored wall. A sweaty, flushed Veronica, wearing her ZTB tank and yoga pants, stares back. It’s a perfectly reasonable claim; for all Logan knows, it’s the absolute truth, but naturally he prattles on nonetheless.

“Hey, did you ever track down that Fellowes guy? Because after I saw him in Orbit the other night...”

“I’m on it. Is that why you’re calling? To ask me about work?” She taps her toe, impatient.

“Oh no, I was just making polite chit-chat. I’m actually calling because I’m locked in a maintenance closet in Henry Gorman’s office, and I need someone to come let me out.”

Veronica blinks. “Henry Gorman? The—?”

“Dean of the Law School, yes, he’s distributing academic honors for large sums of cash, it’s a whole _thing_ , but I think the real crime is that the maintenance closets in his office don’t open from the inside... which I did not actually know when I decided to hide in here—oh, about five minutes ago.”

“I’m on my way,” says Veronica, sighing. She hangs up and throws the cell in her gym bag, followed by her Zeta Theta Beta charm necklace and tank top. It’s a whole process getting her hair to fit under the mask, so she yanks out the tie securing it away from her face and starts braiding. Then she grabs her suit, her boots, and her dark purple lipstick, and puts herself together.

 

 

 

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You are an angel.”

Veronica steps aside to release him from his place of captivity: the small supply closet in the antechamber outside Dean Gorman’s darkened office.

“How did you even end up in there?” she asks, while Logan sidesteps her and tries the office door.

“A janitor was coming through, I had to think fast.”

“Think a little faster next time.”

Gorman’s office is locked, which doesn’t bother Logan at all. He digs around in the pocket of his brown leather jacket and eventually pulls out a small bronze key, with which he unlocks the door.

“How’d you get that?” Veronica demands, while Logan holds the door open for her.

“I have friends in entry-level office job places,” he says, waggling his eyebrows and following her inside Gorman’s office. He closes the door carefully behind them, then heads directly to the large, mahogany desk at the other end of the room. Veronica folds her arms over her stomach and takes in her surroundings: what you’d expect from the dean of the law school. Large, impressive looking books line three towering shelves; a handful of degrees in dark wooden frames hang from the walls. There’s a window behind the high-backed chair that overlooks campus—Waverly Green, probably—and heavy goldenrod curtains frame either side. Logan is digging through a desk drawer, a dark silhouette against the white lamplight streaming in from outside.

“What are you looking for, anyway?” she asks, because obviously Logan is at the top of her shit-list right now, but that doesn’t mean she lacks a healthy amount of curiosity.

“He’s supposedly got a planner in here that has a phone number I need. Ah- _ha_.” He pulls out a fat, leather bound notebook and drops it onto the desktop, immediately flipping through. He must know what he’s looking for, so Veronica’s not going to question it.

“I hope you didn’t seduce some poor secretary to get access,” she says, glaring at a bronze bust that stands in the corner of the office. Out of the side of her eye, she notices Logan glance up and grin at her.

“Jealous?”

“Ha.”

He just shakes his head and resumes his search. “I didn’t seduce anyone. There’s an intern who susp...” He breaks off, his eyes drawn to the fogged glass door over Veronica’s shoulder—and she can see why. Outside, a light has been switched on, and a warm orange glow emanates from the corridor there. Heels click on tile floor, accompanied by a woman’s voice.

“Fuck,” Logan swears, hastening his search through the notebook.

“Tell me that’s your inside man?” Veronica asks hopefully, but he shakes his head.

“It sounds like my inside man’s _boss_.”

“Excellent.”

The footsteps are getting closer, and Logan lets out a victorious hiss. “I think this is it.” He snaps a picture of one of the pages on his cell phone, just as the woman’s voice becomes clear enough to make out:

“Yes, Henry, I’m quite sure the files are in the cabinet, but I don’t see why this couldn’t have waited until—well, yes, I suppose, but...”

The woman is talking on the phone—presumably to the owner of this office—and Veronica prays that she’s referring to the file cabinet out in the foyer. Veronica is just casting around for hiding places, when she spots Logan at the window.

“C’mon,” he whispers, and he’s already unlocked the thing. He reaches to push it open.

“Wait, don’t…!”

But Veronica is a moment too late, because Logan pushes the window all the way to the top, and immediately, a thunderous alarm fills the air.

“ _Shit_ ,” he mutters.

“Nice,” she snaps, already hurdling over the desk to join him at the window.

“Sorry.”

“ _Henry—Henry, I have to go, I must’ve tripped the alarm in the building somehow. Goodness, I don’t know...”_

“Campus security will be here in a minute,” Veronica says to Logan, and that’s if the lady outside doesn’t barge in first. At least they don’t have to worry about whispering, that siren is loud enough. Logan winces.

“Think they’ll believe this is a Frat hazing ritual?”

“Can you climb a tree?” Veronica asks, pointing out the window at the substantial maple that juts up against the side of the building. They’re only on the second floor, and the branches at this height are thick enough to support Logan.

“Can _I_ climb a tree? Of course not. Wealth and privilege, you know this about me.” Off her silence, he adds: “For you, I will try. Here, you go first.”

“I’ve got a climbing wire in my belt; I can scale the wall.” She taps a compartment on her trusted utility belt, and Logan cocks his head.

“Is that new?”

“Really? _Now_?”

“Right, right.” She practically pushes him out of the window onto the most accessible limb, and Veronica waits until he’s a few feet out, preparing to lower himself to another branch, before swinging herself out the window.

She doesn’t bother with the wire. Besides, it’s not really for climbing and she doesn’t think the snap on her belt would support her weight. Rather, she heaves her body over the windowsill, pulling the glass frame down on her way out, and dangles from the ledge for a few moments. Then she drops.

She’s done a hundred drops like this, so she knows how to land, how to roll once she hits the ground to minimize the damage. Even still, falls are tricky, and this one was onto pavement, so she’s got a slight hitch in her step as she gets to her feet. The pain fades as her bones and muscles and tendons adjust, but she hears Logan cursing from somewhere up above, and he’s dropping to the ground twenty feet away a moment later.

“What the hell?” Veronica stands gingerly on her leg, tests out the pressure on her hip, and Logan rushes up to her. “What’d you do that for?” He sounds genuinely worried, the goose.

“It was quicker. C’mon.” Legs and hips all properly aligned again, she snatches up his wrist and drags him after her, running out of the open area in front of the Fuller law building and deeper into the park. She releases his hand once they’re over the footbridge, and even she must admit that this is probably later than is strictly necessary, but they keep jogging until they’re all the way to Hearst Plaza—The Walk, as it’s usually called—and she glances up at him.

“Where’s your car?”

“You gonna walk me to it?”

“Knowing you, you’ll be in danger again before you get there.”

“Concerned?” He grins, even at her lack of response, then points. “I’m in the lot over there. We can cut behind the library.” They hurry along, because Veronica’s in kind of a conspicuous outfit should they meet anyone. The specter of the library— _Veronica’s day job_ —looms heavy in her mind, and she fights off a pathetic impulse to say something about it. _Why didn’t you call? Do you know it’s me?_

“You didn’t have to jump you know,” he says, when they’re rounding the back edge of the building, heading along a narrow concrete sidewalk that’ll bring them right to Lot A. “You could’ve gone down the tree with me.”

 _Is he still harping about that?_ “Do I really need to explain how this works?” She shakes her leg. “Look, good as new.”

He skips ahead and then whips around to walk backwards, hands stuffed in his jean pockets. “Yeah, but it hurts, right?” She shrugs. “So why do it?” He does this thing where it looks like he’s lost his balance and is falling over, but then he just ends up leaning against this metal rack where people chain their bikes, one heel tapping the sidewalk, the other flat on its sole.

Veronica can’t help herself. She’s still angry with him, _he should have called,_ but maybe—maybe this is just how it’s supposed to be. She thought that everything would change when he found her in the library, but really it was just a close call. A near miss. She’s _lucky_.

She strolls up to him and lays a hand on his chest. It’s bullshit that she can’t touch him without gloves.

“It doesn’t hurt for very long,” she tells him.

“Yeah but...”

Veronica presses her mouth softly to his. _He’s always so_ _worried_.

Logan moves his lips slowly with her, a quiet, sweet kiss that makes Veronica wonder what it would be like if he kissed her neck, how his hands would feel all over her—

God, she’s got to get it together. She can’t keep doing this to herself. Not if she’s made up her mind.

The thing is, when a girl finds herself with super powers and a knack for dishing out justice, she’s got a choice to make: fly under the radar, live a quiet life, pretend to be normal, or else get herself a mask, train extensively, and stalk the seedy city streets she calls home. Veronica Mars chose the latter, and she’s got enemies in the highest and lowest of places, so maybe this—this Logan thing just isn’t in the cards for her. She has to accept that, not keep torturing herself with these fairytale fantasies and _what-ifs_.

She pulls back slowly, and he smiles at her. “I could give you credit in the story, if you like,” he says. “Once I write it. ‘Course I’d need a name, so...”

She pokes him in the chest and shakes her head. “I should go.”

“Buildings to scale, bullets to outrun?”

“Locomotives to overpower, yep.” He’s toying with one of the compartments on her belt—not touching her really, except the belt—and Veronica is amused by his inability to sit still.

“Thank you for rescuing me.” He clenches his teeth in a comical grimace and adds: “I was having R. Kelly flashbacks.”

“Think you can stay out of trouble between here and your car, Sylvester?”

“Probably not. You should stick around.” She pats his shoulder once, her farewell touch, but Logan won’t be deterred: “Hey, you’ve got lint on your sleeve, you really shouldn’t be seen out and about like that.” He’s picking at it, and Veronica laughs, stepping over his legs.

“Goodnight, Logan.”

She jogs away from him.

“But—hey, wait!”

“ _Goodnight_ , Logan!”

She runs further and further from the campus lights, and the cool night breeze swallows up his protests.

 

 

 

Actually, she’s not even supposed to work in the library Thursday mornings.

She’s got 8 a.m. Stats and then usually enjoys a nice break before her three p.m. Criminology, but halfway through Professor Morgan’s bit about the chi-squared distribution, Veronica gets a pleading text from Craig, asking her to cover his ten o’clock. She figures, _what the hell_ , she could use the cash (neither investigative equipment nor sorority dues are cheap), and she’s got the time, so she agrees.

Which is why, instead of cuddling up with a latté and research texts at the Theta Beta house, Veronica is restocking shelves on Hearst Library’s third floor at 10:07 on a Thursday morning.

She’s just located the exact slot for _Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: the Lamarkian Dimension_ —a real page-turner, no doubt—when she catches movement out of the corner of her eye and then, a moment later, his voice:

“It’s _you_.”

She freezes. Then unfreezes and tucks the book into its spot on the shelf, swallows, and spares Logan only a cursory glance before grabbing another book from her cart. (He looks lovely, in his green shirt and black jacket and jeans, but that’s entirely beside the point.)

“What do you want?” she asks, not quite sharply.

“I know it’s you,” he says, soft and vaguely awestruck. She restocks another book and doesn’t say anything at all. She’d pretty much come to the conclusion that he _didn’t_ know the girl he met last week was her, and now he’s here, and she can always deny it, and if he knows how come he didn’t call, and... “You dropped this.”

Veronica turns to see what it is Logan’s holding out to her, and he dangles a thin gold chain in front of her—her ZTB necklace.

“Actually, I kind of took it,” he modifies, when Veronica takes it from him, “but that was an accident, I thought it was lint.” He folds his arms and leans one shoulder against the bookshelf Veronica is currently working on, and he’s grinning big and bright. She, meanwhile, can’t seem to figure out anything to say, because _holy shit_ , he’s looking at her and he’s looking at _her_ and he _knows_. “Must’ve gotten hooked onto your jumpsuit by accident. You in a big hurry to rush off and save me?”

She closes her fingers around the necklace, lets her hand drop to her side, but still doesn’t have anything to say.

Logan pushes off the shelf, takes a step closer, but Veronica’s book cart stands between them. “I knew it was you the second I saw you last week,” he goes on— _liar, it took at least a whole minute_ —“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Veronica shoves the necklace into the pocket of her skirt, snatches up another book, and replaces it on the shelf.

“ _Please_ say something.”

Not even looking at him, just staring at the books in front of her—the spines all blur together—and still her heart is pounding. “Why didn’t you call?” she demands. He’s frowning when she finally looks up at him again.

“I call all the time,” he says, confused, “You might remember complaining about it?”

“You know what I mean,” she snaps, and she’s all done with this aisle, so she grabs her book cart and pushes it around him. He follows her to the next row, where she’s got a few volumes to put away. “ _Me_. Why didn’t you call _Veronica_?”

“I didn’t know it was you. I mean, I knew at first but then you—I thought it couldn’t be, because...”

“Because you didn’t like me?”

“What? _No._ ”

“Because you didn’t think a Zeta Theta Beta could be...” she whispers, even though she’s pretty sure there’s no one else on the floor, “ _The Pixie?”_

“Because you didn’t react! You didn’t...” He gestures at his own face to convey something, “Just—nothing! And I thought that if it was you, you would... I dunno, say something!”

The numbers on the white library stickers are all jumbled up, so Veronica can only hope that she’s putting these books back in the right places as she continues, determinedly, to reshelf. “It’s called a _secret_ identity for a reason.”

“But you gave me your number!”

Well he’s got her there. Not that she’ll admit it: “Why did you even ask for it?”

“Because I thought you’d turn me down. If you were really... _you_ , and you were trying to convince me you weren’t, then you wouldn’t agree to go on a damn _date_ with me!” She grabs her cart and pushes it past him—missing his toes by a couple of inches—but he once again follows her to the next aisle of shelves. “Why _did_ you agree?”

He makes a decent point. “To throw you off,” she lies. She picks up the next book and stares hard at the number sequencing, trying to make sense of it and utterly failing.

“Then why are you mad that you succeeded?”

“Because...” Nope. Nothing. Also, she’s in the wrong aisle. But she’ll be damned if she lets Logan know that, so she pretends to search out the correct spot for this volume and ignores the fact that she has no response.

“Wait a minute...” And _dammit_ , he’s catching on. He folds his arms, steps around the cart to lean on the opposite shelf behind her. “You _wanted_ to go out with me.” He gasps, not quite joking in his righteous indignation, “You were going to Lois Lane me!”

“I—what? _No_.”

“Yes, yes, you were! You were going to date me with your cute ZTB daytime identity and reject me with your crime-fighting superhero identity!”

“I was _not,_ and keep your voice down!” She has no stronger argument against his point, so she thrusts the book she’s holding into his hands and shoves her cart out into the main aisle.

He follows as she tries to locate the block of shelves she needs, and he's waving the book in the air as though it contains the thesis to his argument: “You were just going to throw on some glasses and hope that I didn’t notice that you were obviously the same person!”

“I don’t wear glasses, and that would never work in real life,” she throws over her shoulder.

“I know, that’s what makes it so insulting!”

She turns abruptly into the next aisle, pushes her cart so vehemently that it almost hits the wall. “Well _you_ asked me for my number and then didn’t call. That’s _rude_.” She snatches the book back from him and searches out its home on the shelf. Logan is quiet for a few seconds, so she can actually concentrate long enough to determine the string of numbers she’s looking for.

“I didn’t want to lead you on,” he says, just as she’s placing the book. “If you weren’t— _you_ , I didn’t want to waste your time. I’m _sorry._ ” He steps around the cart, so that he’s standing between it and Veronica. Close. Close enough that she smells his cologne, and she tries not to remember how good his mouth tastes.

“I thought...” she begins, staring at his chest, because that’s much easier than his eyes, “I thought maybe you were disappointed.”

He tilts her chin up with the crook of his index finger. “Disappointed how?” –like he genuinely doesn’t know.

“With—you know...” He releases her chin, and she stares at a spot over his shoulder, “I don’t know, I thought maybe you didn’t like... sorority girls.” She glances at him long enough to see his eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“That’s ridiculous. My favorite person is a sorority girl.” He grins, and a knot in her stomach releases, because that’s exactly the kind of nonsense Logan would say to her normally... that is, normally _before_ , when he didn’t know her name and it was all just banter, low stakes. It would give her butterflies anyway, and now it sends a rush of blood to her face, and she wishes she had her cowl because then maybe he wouldn’t notice.

Every part of her wants this. Even the rational part of her brain that should be flashing a red light and announcing _Danger, Will Robinson!_ is coming up with reasons that she could let herself have this.

Logan takes half a step forward, but honestly there isn’t much space to eliminate between them anymore.

“Well,” she says, and swallows her emotion, folding her arms, “You certainly seemed to like sorority girls at the Kappa Gamma mixer last spring.”

Logan laughs. “You were there?”

“Only for about twenty minutes. I had to leave early for work.” She falls back against the shelf, relaxing a little now that they’re navigating through familiar, repartee-heavy waters. “But at least _I_ had an invitation. That party was supposed to be Greek only.”

“My friend got me in with the Pi-Sigs.” Logan ducks his head and whispers: “I was undercover for a story.”

“Were you _undercover_ hitting on Jessica Epstein?”

“Why, were you jealous?”

“I wouldn’t have been if I knew you were the kind of dick who asks for a girl’s number and doesn’t call.” But she’s smiling up at him, and she knows her eyes are laughing so he must recognize that she’s not angry. He angles his body just so, leans against the bookshelf and dips his head, his lips close enough to kiss now. She thinks that if she inhaled, she’d pull his mouth to hers.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs again, contrite. “I’ll never do it again.”

 _He found her_. After everything, he just walked up to her in the library and _knew_.

“Swear?” she whispers.

“Swear.”

Their lips meet somewhere in the middle, as if they’ve just run out of minutes they can stand not kissing each other. His hands thread through her hair, and she wants _skin_. His face, his neck, his back just beneath the hem of his shirt. She closes her mouth over his and he eases her up against the shelves. A slow, white-hot kiss that doesn’t feel like a first kiss, because they know how to kiss each other better than that.

It’s new too, though—when he releases her lips and she tries to chase him, then stops because he’s moving along her jaw to her neck. He whispers things against her skin, and this is new and she likes it... catches the word _beautiful_ but can’t make sense of much else. His hair is so soft and she grabs handfuls of it. His hands move. Desire swells up deep inside her when his fingers brush the exposed skin between shirt and skirt, his lips placing hungry, sucking kisses along her throat. She pulls his mouth back to hers, the only thing she can think to do to extinguish her need for him and it’s a colossal failure, of course. They just grow hungrier, more frantic, taking in more and more of each other— _yes,_ she wants him closer, _yes_ touch her there, _yes_ lift her hips, _yes_ all of it, _yes_ more.

She moans his name, and he gasps hers— _Veronica_ —like a damn revelation, but then again, maybe it is.

She would actually go for his belt, probably, and then they could just—just have all of each other, right here right now up against the bookshelves, but Logan’s kisses slow again, become faint brushings of his lips over her cheek, and her head clears when he whispers her name again.

“Veronica.”

He pulls back part way. (A book falls from the shelf when he does, but neither of them cares.)

Veronica can’t misinterpret him, though—the pulling back—because his attraction to her is very, very evident at the moment. Rather, he’s looking over her face, and she wonders if he’s trying to imagine the mask back on it—what would go where, which parts has he seen before...

“Veronica _What?”_ he asks.

“What?”

“Your name. Veronica What?”

“Oh. Mars. Veronica Mars.”

His eyebrows lift, a joyous smile spreading, unhurried, over his lips, lighting up his eyes. He brushes hair away from her face—unnecessary, but appreciated. Logan’s hands are big and warm, and so much better when she’s not so covered up.

“Veronica Mars,” he echoes back. She doesn’t need to ask his opinion on that. It’s very obvious. He places a light, playful kiss on her lips. “Your chosen career suddenly makes a lot more sense.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, I was on the fence with the whole _indestructibility_ thing, but then I figured, what the hell, I already got the cool alter-ego name, so...”

Logan grins, kisses the tip of her nose—her heart flutters when he does—and then brings his index finger up to trace over her lips, his other hand solid and comfortable on the curve of her neck. “And what’s this, hmm?” he asks, and it’s a moment before she understands he’s talking about her shimmery pink lipstick.

“Urban Decay Revolution Lovelight.”

“I like it,” he says and kisses her again. Mumbles over her lips: “Tastes nice.”

It’s a silly thing to say, of course. He knows they all taste the same.

 

* * *

 

Hearst’s All Greek Ball is not an event that Logan, under other circumstances, would have expected to attend. It’s certainly not an event that Logan would have expected to be attending _alone_ , because one, he’s not in a fraternity, and two, he thinks the Richfield Ballroom is pretty tacky.

Logan has, nonetheless, spent the last forty-five minutes in solo attendance of a ball at which he is only supposed to be a date. Probably, he should have been a lot more bored than he was, but it’s been an interesting exercise in looking perpetually busy while one’s only real task is looking busy. Well, that, and to deflect from the fact that his date—the girl who’s actually supposed to be at this shindig, supposed to be presenting some kind of award for whats-it to somebody or other—was very much absent.

She’s finally shown up now, though, and Logan waits outside the door of the upstairs bathroom while his girlfriend of five months changes out of her black jumpsuit and into her red evening dress.

Logan leans against the wall, hands in the pockets of his tuxedo pants, standing guard. Possibly unnecessarily, as the door locks.

“Oh, are you in line?” asks a slim brunette, approaching Logan in the hall.

“Nah, just waiting for my girlfriend.” He shakes his head solemnly. “You might want to move along, she could be a while. Women’s troubles.”

“Oh.” The brunette frowns and shuffles off, and Logan chuckles at the sound of indignation from the other side of the door.

“Would you stop telling people I’m having _women’s troubles_?” Veronica demands. “They’re going to see me with you if I can ever get into this freakin’ dress.”

“Seriously, babe, just let me in and I’ll help.”

“I’ve heard that story before.”

“And as I recall, it had a very happy ending.”

“Two, actually, and that’s my point. _You_ are a distraction.”

“Hmmm, I’ll take it.”

“ _Oooof_ , there we go.” There’s a thumping sound, like shoes falling to the floor, and then Veronica calls to him: “Just let me fix my lipstick and I’ll be done. Did anyone notice I was gone?”

“Well they noticed you weren’t standing next to me. Funny thing, you were always _just_ stepping away whenever I ran into anyone I knew. The one with the annoying voice is flipping out...”

“ _Hallie_.”

“Yes, Hallie is flipping out, because you’re supposed to be back stage prepping, blah, blah, blah, but I think you’re in the clear.”

“And did Hallie keep her claws off you this time?”

“Want to check me for scratches?”

“I’ll take your word for it. What did you tell her?”

“That you’d been called into a secret meeting with the high priestess of all Greek-dom and would be back before the award presentation.”

“ _High priestess_ , Logan?”

“If there isn’t one, there should be. And _Hallie_ seemed to buy it.”

He can hear Veronica laughing on the other side of the door. “You are as clever as you are good-looking.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, _no one’s_ that good-looking.”

She emerges a second later just to prove him wrong, jamming a foot into a high heeled shoe. She doesn’t come all the way out into the hallway, though, instead stopping on the threshold and waving Logan over to her. When she straightens up again, he slinks his arms around her waist and drops a kiss on her forehead. “Hi.”

She’s in scarlet satin, modestly strapless and tailored narrowly all the way down to her ankles. More daring than her usual Theta Beta event attire, but if Veronica is unconcerned about raising suspicions, Logan certainly won’t complain.

“Hi,” she replies. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Is the world good n’ saved?”

“You massively overestimate the scale of my work, but yes.” She glances over her shoulder into the bathroom—it’s almost too fancy to be called a bathroom, there’s _carpet_ for God’s sake—and back to Logan: “I need to get my bag out of here.”

“I’ve already bribed a waiter to take it to the car.”

Veronica grins—her wide, deliciously sweet grin, though it’s directed at his shoulder. “I love you in a tie,” she says softly, fidgeting with the item in question. Logan kisses her neck.

“But you’ll take me in a t-shirt.”

“Well a girl has needs. _Which,_ ” she speaks over Logan’s predictable attempt to offer his services, “we will address _later_. Now, put on your best rich jackass face and let’s get out there, Tiberius.”

Because, as it turns out, a moneyed, douchebag son-of-a-movie-star is _actually_ a pretty good cover boyfriend for sweet-and-innocent Ronnie Mars. Her sisters mostly don’t trust him, and Dick says he’s crazy for settling down, even if it is with a hot Theta Beta. The new editor at _the Chronicle_ thinks Logan’s sorority girlfriend is a distraction from his work, and Craig-from-the-library's sole response to meeting him was “God, how typical.”

Logan couldn’t care less. Veronica leaves an extra black jumpsuit under his mattress and her ZTB softball shirt in his drawer, so as far as he’s concerned, nobody else gets a vote.

And he’s made his peace with the name “The Pixie.”

He’ll let fucking Steve Connelly at the _Neptune Herald_ have that one.

Because now that Logan knows—like _knows_ knows—he’s pretty glad “Bobcat” didn’t stick. He prefers keeping that kind of information between the two of them.

**Author's Note:**

> For the vmficrecs April prompts! 25K words later.....


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